Detour

The road to a Big Ten title now runs straight through West Lafeyette.

Foolproof two-step plan for Michigan State to win at least a share of the Big Ten title:

1) Win at least 2 of 3 remaining home games.

2) Beat Purdue on the road.

The first part of that plan looks quite a bit more plausible than the second.

Upside from tonight's result in Columbus: We won't have to argue whether sharing the Big Ten title with a team we lost to twice devalues the honor.  (For my part, I could have been cool with it.  I like banners.)

Purdue does have five games remaining, so it's not out of the question they could still drop one to someone besides MSU (in which case the arguably-devalued-shared-title scenario would reemerge).  Their next two games (home to Illinois and at Minnesota) are better upset candidates than the final two games (home to Indiana, at Penn State), so we'll have a good idea where things stand when MSU heads to West Lafayette (in between those two sets of game).

Oh and, hey, at the moment we're still in first place by ourselves:

Keeping (or at least sharing) that top spot on the ladder through the next three weeks just got substantially tougher.