Welcome to Tuesday y'all. The Big Ten Tournament starts in a couple days, and Michigan State doesn't play until noon on Friday against Iowa or Illinois. Either team will do, as the Spartans will face an Illinois team currently with a dead coach walking and an inability to feed its potential lottery pick at center, or they face an Iowa team which, although dangerous, plays very much to MSU's stylistic tendencies. If you want a bracket, it's HYUH (PDF). Now on to the rest of the links.
Shaw Lane Spartans -- Michigan State Football, Basketball and Hockey Blog -- Jim at A Beautiful Day for Football has moved his blog to a new server and location. Wish him a warm welcome y'all.
Green, Izzo get top honors - LSJ Blogs: Hey, Joe No surprises at the team banquet as Draymond Green took team MVP from both the coaches and the media. Derrick Nix won the most improved player while Adreian Payne won the Scholar-Athlete award.
MSU's Brandan Kearney might fill void left by Branden Dawson injury | The Detroit News | detroitnews.com That's one theory the Detroit News throws out there, but Izzo states in the article that he may throw in Gauna to run a lineup with three bigs. When Adreian Payne's running the three, I'm safely sure that would qualify as "big".
More links after the jump.
Michael Rosenberg: Michigan State's pain, Michigan's gain grate on Tom Izzo | Detroit Free Press | freep.com Well yeah, that and having your McDonald's All-American freshman go out for the year with an ACL tear will do that for well. As for Michigan...
Basketball Prospectus | Tuesday Truths: Final Reality His Wonkiness John Gasaway points out that Michigan is an unusually weak two seed in the Big Ten Tournament; OSU and MSU are head and shoulders above everyone else in efficiency margin, while Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana make up the next tier. The Wonk also points out that that margin is null and void if Tim Hardaway Jr. starts to consistently make threes.
2012 Big Ten Baseball Weekly Review - Week 3 - Corn Nation In case you were wondering what was going on with Big Ten Baseball, Nebraska blog Corn Nation has a good summary of the weekend's games. MSU was swept by Texas A&M, in case you were wondering.
Bracketology 2012: VCU Locked In, Drexel Must Hope - SBNation.com Chris Dobbertean has the Spartans as a #2 seed in the West with North Carolina as the #1 in that region. I could make a links post solely out of projected brackets, but instead of that I'll just point you towards the Bracket Matrix, which lists 89 projections for the NCAA Tournament.