Michigan State and Delaware are playing live on the NCAA Tournament schedule on Thursday and the Spartans game comes at 4:40 pm ET and is live streaming online from the March Madness main website and the game is from TNT and will be at the Spokane Arena in Washington against the Blue Hens.
Michigan State comes into the tournament in the East region and they are a number four seed and many felt that was not a worthy seed for the Spartans, as they have been one of the better teams in the nation and they won their conference tournament. The same could be said for Louisville and the Cardinals come in as defending national champions and now the Spartans are looking to make everyone pay and that starts with Delaware in the horribly named second round, even though both these teams are playing in their first games. So did they get a bye, why is it called the second round NCAA, why are you guys so terrible? Okay, back to the Spartans: they have leadership and experience in names like Keith Appling, Gary Harris and Adreian Payne and they will rely on that this tournament.
Tom Izzo never takes anyone lightly and he won't let his team coast against Delaware and this is a number four seed matching up with a number 13 and those can be dicey at times and the Hens come in after going 25-9 last season, while MSU was 26-8. Branden Dawson was named the MVP of the conference tournament and the Spartans took down Michigan after a great game from Payne, as he had 18 points and nine rebounds and they will need that strong play again if they want to make good for President Obama, who picked the team to win the championship this year after picking Indiana and Louisville in 2013.
During the season the Spartans hit a rough patch in conference play, but they were able to pull out of it and one of the main reasons was due to the play of Harris, who led the team in scoring with 17 points per game and Payne was second with 15 points per game. Dawson was tops in rebounding with eight rebounds over Payne who was at seven per game, while Appling showed off his leadership once again and led the team in assists and the whole Michigan State team comes in ranked sixth in the nation in assists per game. The team is shooting over 47 percent to rank 31st in the nation and they are averaging well over 70 points and will be a handful for the Hens.
Michigan State had a tough run at the end of the season and they lost to Ohio State when they were unranked and they beat both Wisconsin and Michigan in the tournament and now they have Delaware in front of them. The team lost three of four and that stretch earlier in the season could have been deadly, but after not beating Michigan in two games in the season, they won over them for the conference title.
