Michigan State and Michigan tip off tonight in Ann Arbor, and again Sunday in East Lansing.

The two teams couldn't be on further ends of the College Basketball spectrum right now. Michigan is trying to lock in a number one seed in the NCAA Tournament, while Michigan State is trying to claw their way in. The crazy part about all of this is that the two rivals will play each other in back to back games to end the regular season. I don't know that this has ever happened before, at least not that I can remember.

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Michigan State is definitely the more desperate of the two teams, needing to win at least one of the games to get into the tournament. Sparty lost a crucial game to Maryland recently that made it so they would have to beat Michigan to keep their NCAA hopes alive. Check out the hype video that Michigan State put out on social media today simply titled, "Beat Michigan."

It might be a good omen for the Spartans today considering the video featured quite a bit of Draymond Green. Green was a star at Michigan State before heading to the NBA, and guess what today is . . .

It's Draymond's birthday!

If you would have asked me last week about this game, I would have told you to take Michigan, and whatever the spread was. It looked like Michigan might win both games by 50, but the Wolverines have stumbled a bit.

They were blown out by Illinois this week, and did not look like the same team that has dominated the Big10 this season. Now we should note that Illinois is really good, and many people see them in the Elite 8. This is just the first time that Michigan has looked beatable in a while, and Sparty fans are hoping to take advantage of it.

There are so many clichés when it comes to rivalry games, but it feels like many of them will apply tonight. My money is still on Michigan to win both games, but we'll see if Izzo can pull out some of his heralded March Magic.

Tonight's game tips off at 7pm on ESPN. The two play again on Sunday at 4:30pm on CBS

 

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