Part 2 of the 3-part preview for tomorrow night’s big game between the in-state rivals.
We’ll start looking at the schedules by breaking down the common opposition between the two teams.
| Michigan | Michigan State | Advantage | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Florida | W 26-6 | W 12-6 | M |
| 13 Oregon | W 9-8 (2OT) | W 14-9 | S |
| 4 BYU | W 16-6 | W 10-7 | M |
| 7 Boston College | W 14-7 | L 7-8 | M |
| 14 UC Santa Barbara | W 21-0 | W 11-10 | M |
| 2 Colorado State | W 11-3 | L 10-11 (OT) | M |
| 3 Arizona State | W 12-10 | W 12-11 | M |
As you can see, Michigan has performed better against every single common opponent except Oregon. The Wolverines took 2 overtimes to beat the Ducks at a rainy neutral site, whereas State easily dispatched them at home.
All other games except UCSB and BC also follow another trend: State played these teams the night after they fell to Michigan (UCSB lost to State the night before they were blasted by Michigan, and BC had a day off in between games). This could mean that the Wolverines softened them up for Sparty, as is a big topic of discussion on the collegelax.us forum.
As for other games the two teams have played, I’ve also put them into convenient chart form below:
| Michigan | Result | Michigan State | Result | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| @ 5 Chapman 11-8 | W 11-8 | @ 15 Simon Fraser | W 17-14 | M |
| @ 27 Loyola Marymount | W 12-2 | @ 16 Illinois | W 13-12 | – |
| 25 Missouri | W 26-9 | n 17 Minn-Duluth | W 10-8 | – |
| Pitt | W 20-1 | n 30 Sonoma State | L 14-15 (OT) | M |
| @ Ohio U | W 15-5 | M |
Michigan has a big advantage in results in 3 of their other games (they’ve also played one more than the Spartans), and in the other two, they played slightly less impressive competition, but had much more impressive scores, so I called those even.
Part 3 coming this afternoon.