Back soon.

So, I think I made the silly mistake of firing up this blog before we really had the free time to maintain it properly. We’ll be back in a couple of months to talk football. Pinky swear.

Various and Sundry.

Basketball: Should be a very interesting game tonight against Illinois, and it’s really one of the most important games of the season yet for our team. The Illini are a better team than their record indicates…but they’ve obviously struggled quite a bit this season. Obviously, beggars can’t be choosers, and any road win for us is big; however, a win tonight could be especially important on a psychological level, since nobody on the team has ever won in Champaign. (Our last win down there was in 2002; for some perspective of how long ago that was, consider that our leading scorer in the game was Adam Ballinger, the major story was Marcus Taylor’s concussion, and there’s a good chance I watched the game on the big TV in the Case Hall cafeteria while eating smiley fries and salisbury steak, ha.)

Even if Illinois was able to play their best lineup, I’d still say that we should win, because we simply have the better team. However, Brian Randle is out for the rest of the season and Raymar Morgan should have a field day. Raymar only scored 10 points the last time around while being guarded by Randle, before eventually fouling out. This time, there’s no excuse. As kj said, it’s unlikely that MSU will have the opportunity to run-’n-gun like we were able to against Indiana; we’ll have to get our points in the halfcourt set, and it’s an excellent opportunity for Raymar to assert himself down low in a meaningful way–something he hasn’t done consistently since much earlier in the season.

Winning tonight would allow us to gain some confidence heading into the conference tournament, and it’s especially important to do so now because winning in Columbus on Sunday won’t be easy. We usually play well there (like last season, when Neitzel scored 29 and we really could have won) but OSU has played themselves back onto the tournament bubble by beating Wisconsin, and surely the game has higher stakes for them than it will for us.

Bottom line, tonight’s much more important than your average midweek game against a bottom-of-the-standings team. Turnovers have killed us on the road this season, but we’ve done a much better job of hanging onto the ball the past couple of weeks (even during the disappointing game in Madison). I think the Mr. Hyde version of MSU shows up on the road for the first time since the Minnesota game, and we take it 61-53.

One last thing from the Indiana game:

Not the best picture quality, but nice nonetheless.

Football: Exciting recruiting news continues to pour in, as yesterday Battle Creek Central junior running back Larry Caper verbally committed to MSU ($), turning down offers from Michigan, Iowa, Purdue, and others in the process. This means that we’ve now received commitments from 3 of the top 5 players in Michigan for the 2009 class, and 5 of the top 10: two running backs, a quarterback, a wide receiver, and a linebacker. Paul knows much more about recruiting than I do, and so I’m sure he’ll be weighing in soon…but this is really fantastic. Not only are these guys talented, but they’re from Michigan, and that we’re doing so well getting in-state commitments can only bode well for the future of our program.

Hockey: I’ll try to have a longer post about this either tomorrow or sometime this weekend, but the CCHA playoffs open tonight, as UNO takes on UAF. State, of course, has the weekend off, and will host either Lake State, UAF, UNO, BGSU, or Northern next weekend at Munn. Northern swept us pretty convincingly in Marquette a month ago, so obviously I’m rooting for OSU to take them out. Either way, however, ours is a team which has obviously performed in the postseason and should have plenty of confidence after finishing the regular season on a 5-1-0 run. If the seeding holds in the tournament, we’d have to play Miami in the semifinals. That’s no small order, of course, but I’ve been itching for a second chance against them after we didn’t bother showing up in the two games earlier this year…

Evening Folks!

This is an amendment to Ben’s introduction, nay Mission Statement, of what will shortly become the envy of the Michigan State blogosphere.  As Ben stated, this blog should focus primarily on Michigan State football, but I feel in the meantime until the season starts we’ll cover a wide variety of topics we’re both interested such as the NHL, March Madness , recruiting, baseball and my shameless addiction to reality television.  I’m sure we’ll also fill this space with random memories of Michigan State, shameless lists ranking things such as East Lansing bars and tailgating hotspots, and great restaurants throughout America seeing as Ben and I have an unhealthy obsession with food.  Hopefully I’ll cut my teeth on posts about the new season of The Hills and the Red Wings’ failure to make it out of the Campbell Conference, so by the time the football season rolls around I’ll be blogging with such a vim it’ll knock your knickerbockers off.

Now a little about myself…Ben and I entered college at the same time, but I decided I needed a few more senior years under my belt before I could leave such a fine institution.  After several victory laps I officially graduated from MSU in 2007 with a degree in Political Theory.  My Poly Theory background has landed me a plum job at J. Crew where I’ve actually been employed for the better part of four years now.  You need chinos?  I can help you out.  So to wrap it all up I live at home with my parents, I work at the mall that’s ten minutes from my house, I like sports, and I like to tell people my opinion via the interwebs.  I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Izzo rumors.

Spartan fans seem to be half up-in-arms, half no-freaking-way about this blog post from the Indy Star, which lists Izzo as a potential candidate for the IU vacancy. The specter of Izzo leaving State would be unpalatable regardless of his destination; that he would be leaving for another Big Ten program would certainly be insult to injury. Hysteria aside, I think there’s no way this ends up happening.

First of all, God love ‘im, but the man has an ego. This was pretty clearly borne out during the most farcical portions of our football coaching search two Decembers ago, when it didn’t seem entirely impossible that Izzo’s office would be moving a quarter-mile east on Shaw Lane. He could have shot down the rumors entirely with a simple statement; but I think it’s pretty clear that he was immensely enjoying the ridiculous idea that his coaching genius transcended basketball. Anyway, his ego is stroked at MSU to a degree he’d probably never attain at IU. Quite rightly, Izzo holds near-deity status in East Lansing; while the past few seasons certainly have been disappointing, his overall record is unimpeachable, and the MSU basketball program has been more successful under him than it has been at any other time in its history. That success has brought him a sort of invincibility amongst the fan base; coaches at other schools would have been subject to far more criticism than Izzo faced after the debacles at Iowa and Penn State earlier this season. He’s earned residual goodwill; if he decided to leave, he’d start from scratch again (aside from the first-year honeymoon, of course). At the risk of being too psychoanalytical, I think he enjoys being adored at State too much to consider leaving. If he decided to leave for another program in the same conference, all of that adoration would turn to absolute scorn.

Nor is Indiana an ideal job at this point in time. It’s pretty safe to say that the program is going to face significant sanctions in the wake of Kelvin Sampson’s indiscretions. It’s purely speculative as to what the sanctions will entail, and college coaches have been burned before by sanctions which were more severe than expected. (Dennis Franchione at Alabama and Tommy Amaker at Michigan come to mind; it didn’t help that both of them were crappy coaches, however.) It’s very difficult to imagine Izzo abandoning a stable, and great, situation at MSU for uncertainty at IU.

Absent sanctions, the IU job is at least as attractive as the MSU one. While State probably has better facilities, IU easily has stronger tradition, is at least our equal in terms of fan base support, and probably offers greater recruiting prospects. The prospect of sanctions certainly makes the job more unattractive, but it’d still be a great gig for someone like Tom Crean. I certainly would rather he stay at Marquette, because I would love to see him at the helm in East Lansing someday; but if I were him, I’d jump to IU without a second thought.

Anyway, I’m really not all that concerned about this; the likelihood of Izzo leaving State is minuscule. I just wish he’d learn the lesson from last December’s charade and confirm his intentions as soon as possible.

Here we go.

This blog was created for two reasons:

1. Like any other blog, for selfish reasons. We’ve discussed our thrills, frustrations, agonies, ecstasies, and all other emotions in between for years amongst ourselves and with others; we might as well do it in front of the whole world (or, at least, whomever stumbles on by…).

2. More to the point, because not enough people already have done so. While many schools (including several in the Big Ten) have diverse and excellent representation within the blogosphere, the pickings for our beloved Alma Mater are comparatively slim. So if very few others are doing it, why don’t we?

This site will almost certainly focus primarily on Michigan State football, and to a lesser extent, on basketball and hockey…with occasional digressions into the Tigers, and whatever else seems interesting. The entire thing is a giant experiment, and we’ll see how it goes; hopefully it’s a good time for both us and you.

For now,

A bit about myself: both of my parents are State graduates; even though I grew up in New Jersey, I decided at age 8 that I wanted to go to MSU, and never really wavered. I graduated in 2005, and moved to DC, where I worked in politics for 3 years. I’m currently a law student in Chicago, where I routinely ignore my studies in order to head back to East Lansing for MSU games as frequently as possible.

I’m sure Paul will be by shortly to introduce himself…