Despite the end of our run, the contest must go on. Standings prior to the Sweet 16 are here.

There were 66 possessions in the final.

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This post will be updated daily during tournament action. Old standings will be left in place, but the newest will be on top.

Standings After Round 2

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Last weekend's series at Miami went ... poorly. Very poorly. With a chance to more or less lock up a bid, the Spartans were outscored 10-1 in an ugly sweep. All hope is not yet lost, though: As of right now we sit 14th in the Pairwise Rankings. If there are no surprise auto-bids and that position holds, we would be in the field. The good news is that of the teams immediately behind us, only Western Michigan is still in action, and letting them pass us would not, by itself, knock us out (although it would mean that one bid thief would do the job). The bad news is that multiple teams further back can take a point away from us, even if they can't pass us themselves, and potentially vault idle Northern Michigan ahead of us.

US College Hockey Online now has the Pairwise Predictor up, which allows us to try out every different scenario and see what happens. With 19 games (2 of which can end in ties) yet to be played, we have about 1,000,000 scenarios to try. That's not feasible, so we'll look at the key variables in isolation and try to extrapolate from that.

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NOTE: The deadline for entry is tipoff of the First Four games, as those games count for the contest.

Tired of filling out an entire bracket for your prediction contests? Neither am I (and there will be a traditional bracket contest as well), but it's fun to try something different too. Pete has promised prizes, but I don't know what they are yet.

Here's how it works:

1. Each team earns a certain number of points for each game they win, depending on their seed and the round:
   First Four: Half of the team's main-bracket seed (a 16-seed play-in winner gets 8 points, an 11-seed gets 5.5, etc.). If that team continues to advance, they get full seed value for each win beyond that.
   Main Bracket: Full seed value for each win.
   Final Four bonuses: 1 point for reaching the Final Four, 3 for reaching the final, 5 for winning the final. These bonuses are cumulative (a 1-seed champion gets 6*1 + 1 + 3 + 5 = 15 points).
2. You pick 16 teams (hence the contest name) out of the 68 in the tournament. Your score is the total number of points earned by those 16 teams, as described above. Post a comment to this thread with your list of teams and, as a tiebreaker, the number of possessions in the championship game. (Statsheet's determination of said number will be considered official, should a tiebreaker be necessary.)
3. There is no requirement as to where your 16 teams must be in the bracket; if you want to choose teams that are playing each other in the first round, or the First Four for that matter (guaranteeing that you get one of the teams advancing, even if you are guaranteed to lose one), you can; if you would rather pick one from every pod so that you could have 16/16 in the second weekend, you can do that. In the past, the theoretical maximum set of selections has sometimes had as many as 6 teams from a single region.
4. Want to change your entry? Until the First Four tip off Tuesday night, you can do so. To make the bookkeeping easier, please do so by replying to your original entry. The last entry will count. (You don't need to redo the whole thing, unless you're changing enough that it's easier to do so; if you're just switching one team out for another, and the rest of the list is the same, you can just say so.)
   
5. In the event that there are problems with your submitted entry, here's how we'll handle it:
   No tiebreaker: Your tiebreaker will be 0 possessions (which means, unless the final is Notre Dame-Wisconsin, you will lose the tiebreaker).
   Not enough teams: If you have an entry with 16 before this and try to change it but only put in 15, we'll use the earlier entry instead. If not, all the teams listed will count, but you'll be at a disadvantage with fewer teams.
   Too many teams: Again, if you have an earlier entry with the right number of teams, we'll use that. If not, you will get the 16 lowest-scoring teams out of your list. So don't put in too many.
6. Tiebreakers are as follows:
   - Closest to the correct number of possessions in the final
   - Individual team scores among the selected teams, from highest to lowest
   - Total number of games won by selected teams (this was the second tiebreaker last year)
   - Random selection

Score updates will be posted periodically during the tournament. Now, it is time to pick your 16.

With the double championship in the nation's strongest conference and nine RPI top 25 wins, our case for a 1 seed is a strong one. The sheer number of losses could be a negative factor, but Kansas only has one fewer, four fewer top 25 wins, and failed to "do the double"; Missouri's non-conference schedule was an abomination, and North Carolina has half as many top 25 wins. I don't think more than one will be placed ahead of us.

The locations of the 1 seeds is an interesting debate: where Kentucky (the overall #1, most likely) goes may be decided by who is #3. Kentucky is virtually equidistant from Atlanta and St. Louis, and presumed #2 Syracuse will be in Boston. If #3 is North Carolina, they would prefer Atlanta, so Kentucky would probably go to St. Louis; if the #3 is Kansas or us, Kentucky will go to Atlanta and the #3 will be in St. Louis. If we are in St. Louis, our #2 seed will likely be Kansas (if they do not get the fourth 1 seed) or Missouri (if Kansas does). If we are out west in Phoenix, who knows? If the third #1 seed is Kansas, Missouri would probably get pushed out west with us; if it's North Carolina, one of Kansas and Missouri will probably join us out west while the other sits in the Midwest with Kentucky.

In the unlikely event that we get a 2 seed, the question becomes one of bracket balance (S-Curve) versus preferred location. If the #3 overall is Kansas, we're almost certainly in the Midwest with them; if it's North Carolina, Kentucky will be in the Midwest and putting us with them would skew the S-Curve with #1 and #5 there (the committee does try to keep it reasonably balanced, although a perfect 1-8, 4-5, 2-7, 3-6 is not necessary). We might get pushed out west instead with presumed #4 Kansas for balance reasons, or wind up in Atlanta with North Carolina (less travel, still reasonable balance).

My guess: #1 in St. Louis, with Missouri as the #2. Kansas out west as the #1 with OSU out there, UNC in Boston with Syracuse, Duke with Kentucky in Atlanta. Your thoughts, and the selection show rundown, here.

MSU Hockey returns to the ice this weekend with a quarterfinal series at Miami. Friday night will be at 7:35 ET; Saturday and (if necessary) Sunday at 7:05. Miami swept us at Munn right after New Year's (2-1 (OT) and 4-0), and MSU will have to get revenge if they are to take part in the final rounds of the CCHA playoffs (and probably if they are to reach the NCAA tournament as well).

First round results in the CCHA playoffs: Notre Dame and Lake State swept at home, but Northern dropped games 2 and 3 to Bowling Green in a major upset. Bowling Green will now face Ferris State, while the Irish travel to Yost and Lake State goes to Western.

Last weekend resulted in a surprisingly small amount of movement around us: we dropped one spot to 12th as Northern Michigan fell apart (giving Denver the comparison point over NMU and lifting the Pioneers out of the tie with us). A full breakdown after the jump.

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Want a look at what the math says about the Big Ten tournament before you fill out your bracket? Ken Pomeroy has run the numbers using his rating system, and I am doing the same for mine. (Pomeroy gave Indiana semi-home advantage; I'm giving Purdue semi-home advantage as well.)

No-Margin System

Our half of the bracket is a little tougher, as Indiana is actually the highest-rated team after giving them half of home court. OSU, MSU, and Indiana are co-favorites, with Michigan not far behind and Wisconsin and Purdue both with sizable chances of winning as well. Northwestern can possibly stake a claim to a seventh bid for the conference with an opening-round win, certainly by reaching the semifinals (which they have slightly better than a 1 in 6 chance of doing).

Margin-Aware System

Michigan State and Ohio State both make a bit of a leap forward in this system, Michigan drops back, and a large chunk of the remaining movement is a question of how early you meet one of those three teams.

Hockey is off this week thanks to a split against Notre Dame, clinching a top 5 spot in the CCHA and a bye in the first round of the CCHA playoffs. Unfortunately, since we ended up in 5th, we will be on the road for the quarterfinals against Miami next week. Thanks to the Pairwise Rankings, however, we can make a somewhat more educated guess as to where things stand than in basketball. A reminder of how they work (which is slightly different from two years ago; I'm not sure whether the changes were implemented last year or this year, since we had no chance of making it last year):

• Shootouts don't exist as far as the Pairwise Rankings are concerned. Any game that ended in a shootout (CCHA regular season games or any in-season tournaments which use the shootout to decide advancement rather than playing open-ended OT) is considered a tie.
• Teams with an RPI of .500 or above are "under consideration". (This is a change; two years ago the cutoff was top 25. At the moment there are 32 teams under consideration, or TUCs.)
• Every TUC is compared against each other TUC as follows:
  RPI: Higher RPI gets one point. RPI is also the tiebreaker in the event that the total comparison is even.
  TUC: Better record against fellow TUCs (not including head-to-head matchups, those are handled separately) gets one point, as long as both teams have played 10 such games. If one or both fall short of that threshold, neither team gets a point.
  Common: Records are compared against common opponents. In previous years, the aggregate winning percentage was used even if (as was common) the number of games against various opponents was not equal; this could be a major disadvantage if you played, say, five games against Michigan and one against Michigan Tech (usually a bottom-feeder in the WCHA, although they're semi-competent this year) and someone else played five against Tech and one against Michigan. This year the common-opponent point is decided differently: the winning percentage against each opponent is computed separately and the winning percentages are added together.
  H2H: Each win in head-to-head play gets you one point.
  The team with the most points from this comparison wins the comparison; if they have an equal number, RPI is the tiebreaker.
• Teams are ranked by the number of comparisons won. Ties are broken by RPI.

Right now we sit in 11th place (tied with Northern Michigan and Denver on comparisons won, but with the highest RPI of that trio). 16 teams get in; this usually includes one or two auto-bids who are outside the top 16 in the Pairwise, so the cut line is usually at top 14 or 15. A detailed breakdown of what we are rooting for this week follows after the jump.

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With two weeks left in conference play, it's time to once again revisit the race for the Big Ten title. Previous projections: halfway, 1/4 season. Full rankings are here; of particular note is that we're the highest-ranked Big Ten team in both versions now (8th nationally in the basic rankings, 2nd in the margin-aware).

Title and first-round-bye odds are based on 100,000 simulations.

The Title Race

Four teams are realistically alive (Indiana and Purdue could, in theory, share the title, but the odds of MSU and OSU both losing three straight heading into the Breslin showdown and Michigan losing three of four without playing any of the top five are, to say the least, not good). The remaining schedules (with no-margin W%, margin-aware W%, and predicted margin - home court works out to about 4.5 points):

Michigan State

@ Minnesota: 67% / 81% / +7.5
Nebraska: 94% / 98% / +21
@ Indiana: 47% / 57% / +1.5
Ohio St: 70% / 75% / +6

Ohio State

Illinois: 87% / 95% / +15.5
Wisconsin: 75% / 84% / +8.5
@ Northwestern: 58% / 69% / +4
@ Michigan St: 30% / 25% / -6

Michigan

@ Northwestern: 50% / 45% / -1
Purdue: 79% / 82% / +8
@ Illinois: 55% / 56% / +1
@ Penn St: 72% / 76% / +6

Wisconsin

@ Iowa: 67% / 74% / +5.5
@ Ohio St: 25% / 16% / -8.5
Minnesota: 82% / 89% / +11
Illinois: 81% / 89% / +11.5

Win Distribution and Title Odds

Top number in each cell is the chance by the no-margin system, bottom is by margin-aware. We have clinched a bye thanks to tiebreakers (head-to-head sweep of Purdue; should we end up tied with Indiana for 4th we would have the same split against Michigan and Ohio State but a sweep of Wisconsin while Indiana lost to them).

The rest of the league after the jump.

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Senior Weekend for hockey went well, as the Spartans took care of business against 10th-place Alaska with a 3-2 overtime win Friday night (msuspartans.com recap here) and a 3-0 win Saturday (recap). That moves MSU up to fourth in the CCHA and 10th in the Pairwise with one weekend left in the CCHA regular season. The playoff format is:

• First weekend of March: top five get the week off, the rest play in the best-of-three first round (11 at 6, 10 at 7, 9 at 8).
• Second weekend: Best-of-three quarterfinals. 5 at 4, 1-3 host the three winners of the first round (reseeded).
• Third weekend: Final two rounds (single elimination) at the Joe. Semifinals are reseeded. There is a third-place game which, unlike the rest of the tournament games, is allowed to end in a tie (to ensure that the title game is not delayed); I'm not sure if a shootout would take place at the end of OT (it hasn't come up since the shootout was instituted in CCHA regular-season play).
  

Standings and what we need to do to ensure that we get a bye after the jump.

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First things first: a dramatic come-from-behind victory against our biggest rival in hockey and a road win at the #3 team in the nation to tie up the Big Ten race both deserve this:

First, basketball: Not enough can be said about the spectacular defensive effort today. When you hold a team to fewer made baskets (14) than turnovers (15), you usually win. Jared Sullinger got his (17 points on 15 shots + 8 free throws, 16 rebounds, but 10 turnovers in the process), and Aaron Craft added 15 points (more than half of which came from the free throw line), but they got no help offensively from anyone else; Deshaun Thomas and William Buford each went 2 of 12 from the floor. Interior defense in particular came up big; Keith Appling, Adreian Payne, Brandon Wood, and Austin Thornton each got credit for a steal on Sullinger, and Payne drew at least one charge as well.

Offensively, it was the Adreian Payne show: 15 points (6 for 6 shooting, including a couple of thunderous tip-dunks) in just 20 minutes. Ohio State had no answer for Payne down low. Appling added 14 (but had 7 turnovers and no assists). Draymond Green came up one rebound short of yet another double-double (12 points, 9 boards). Derrick Nix added a couple of nice hook shots (6 points), and Branden Dawson and Brandon Wood helped clean up the glass (8 and 7 rebounds, respectively; 5 of Dawson's on the offensive end). A couple of long droughts in the second half let Ohio State get as close as four, but everybody chipped in a few points to pull away again: Appling, Nix, Payne, and Green each contributed two points to widen the lead back out to 10 with three minutes to go.

Four factors chart:

Rebounding and turnovers were both fairly close; at the risk of being Captain Obvious, FG% was the big difference. Ohio State had not been held below 42% eFG this season; we held them below 30%. Only Kansas had held their efficiency below 0.95 PPP; we held them to 0.75.

With six games to go in conference play, we're tied with the Buckeyes, and Michigan and Wisconsin sit one game back. It's going to be a wild finish.

Hockey weekend recap after the jump.

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Three phases to this one:

1) Defensive dominance in the first 23 minutes leads to a 46-24 lead for MSU, and the only question appeared to be how long before the Human Victory Cigars (Anthony Ianni and the rest of the walk-on brigade) would make their appearance.

2) Absolute panic from fans as Penn State went on a 23-6 run to cut that seemingly insurmountable lead to just five with 9:18 to go.

3) MSU answers with a 23-5 run of its own (featuring three and-ones and a pair of three-pointers) to put it back out of reach with three minutes to go.

The result? Possibly the most nerve-wracking 20-point win ever.

The four-factors graph:

As usual, rebounding was a huge advantage, getting nearly half of our own misses back while holding Penn State under 20%. The other key factor: Penn State fouled. A lot. We took 34 shots from the charity stripe, our highest number in conference play on the year. (Free throw shooting left a little to be desired, however - only 23 of those went in.)

Player notes:

• Draymond Green was up to his usual stat-sheet-stuffing ways: 23 points, 12 rebounds, 5 assists, and a steal. One sour note: 5 missed free throws (9-14), including two when the game was at its closest in the second half.
• Branden Dawson is on a roll (earning a shout-out from CBSSports.com as a potential Freshman of the Year dark-horse): 12 points, 7 boards, 3 steals, 2 blocks.
• Adreian Payne (12 points, 5 boards, 2 steals) and Keith Appling (10-4-7 with a steal as well) also got to double figures.
• Derrick Nix was limited to just two points and had two turnovers as well. He had more difficulty than usual dealing with double-teams inside, particularly during Penn State's run.
  
• Two near-trillions (for those unfamiliar with the concept, it's an appearance in which you record absolutely no stats except for minutes, so the box score has one or two minutes followed by a bunch of zeros - Mark Titus, former walk-on for Ohio State and now writer at Grantland (warning: the article linked contains mention of the game that absolutely did not take place last Tuesday) may have coined the term (edit: as MSUDersh points out in the comments, the term goes back quite a bit further) popularized the term among college basketball bloggers, although it was apparently in use in the NBA well before): Ianni went two minutes recording only a turnover, and Brandan Kearney nearly pulled an incredibly rare eight-trillion: 8 minutes, 1 foul, nothing else.
  

Next up: a trip to Ohio State (Saturday at 6:00 ET). Win that and we set up a likely winner-take-all (or at least "one team can win outright, the other can force a tie") finale three weeks later (not to mention establishing further separation from Wisconsin and Michigan); lose and we will have to win out and hope for a little help.

Ask any fan of college basketball what to expect from a Tom Izzo team, and the first thing you'll hear is along the lines of "an almost fanatical devotion to rebounding". Rarely has that been better illustrated than Sunday's game.

Four factors:

Michigan posted a respectable eFG% and won the turnover battle decisively. Free throws made up some of the gap, but the key was clearly the battle on the glass. The numbers are incredible: 12 of 25 possible offensive rebounds, 28 of 31 (!) defensive rebounds. Draymond Green, as you might have heard, had a big influence on this: he had 16 rebounds total (the same number as Michigan's entire team), 14 on defense. His knee didn't appear to be bothering him at all in his 38 minutes, and Michigan had absolutely no answer on the glass. (Just how ridiculous was his rebounding? He got to nearly half - 47.5% - of available defensive rebounds while on the floor. I don't think that's a record, but it's got to be up there.)

Derrick Nix added six more boards, Branden Dawson and Brandon Wood four each, Austin Thornton and Adreian Payne three each. Evan Smotrycz was the only Michigan player to manage even four rebounds.

On the season, MSU now ranks 14th in offensive rebounding at 39.6%, 13th in defensive rebounding at 73.6%. That's just shy of the 2009 team's finishing ranks of 6th and 11th.

The other key to this game: defending Trey Burke and keeping him from getting drives which would either lead to a lay-up or a kick out to an open shooter. While there were a few easy lay-ups, for the vast majority of the game Michigan had to resort to bombing away with long, contested jumpers. Combine that with allowing no second chances and getting back nearly half of your own misses, and only an astronomical disadvantage in turnovers could have derailed the game.

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Full recap will be coming later. For now:

• It's the end of Michigan's short-lived winning streak over us. Michigan never got closer than eight in the second half; I wouldn't necessarily call it a comfortable win, but at no time in the second half was there cause for real panic.
  
• Knee injury? What knee injury? Draymond Green had had a lot of quiet games against Michigan before today; not anymore. He led all scorers (tied with Zack Novak) with 14 and outrebounded Michigan. That's not a typo. Green had 16 rebounds; the entire Michigan team had 15.
• Rebounding as a whole: going from the ESPN box score, we got 50% of possible offensive rebounds; Michigan got 10%.
• Held Michigan under 0.9 points per possession. Keith Appling in particular was making great defensive plays all afternoon, but the team as a whole deserves a lot of credit for contesting almost every shot. A few layups off of miscommunication, but on the whole Michigan spent the day mostly chucking up prayers and not having them answered.
• Still within a game of Ohio State for the conference lead, and we'll have two opportunities to take them down. An outright conference title remains within our own control; split the OSU games and we need a little help to share the title (the most likely help being their return trip to Michigan).

Celebrate here.

As we have passed the halfway point of conference play, it's time to revisit the title race. Projections after the first quarter of conference play can be found here. As a reminder, these are based on my modified Bradley-Terry rating systems; the full ratings can be found here.

As before, title and first-round bye chances are based on 100,000 simulations - there are way too many combinations to do exhaustive computation at this point.

Basic (W-L only) Method

Ohio State has re-emerged as the favorite, but even they are expected to lose another 3 or 4 games - road trips to all three of the other major contenders await. Below the top four is a respectable tier of three likely tournament teams (Purdue is the only one that has any real reason for concern at the moment, due to a couple of awful losses). Minnesota and Northwestern are both in the hunt for an NCAA bid as well, although each will likely have to get to 8-10 in conference at minimum. Iowa is an extreme longshot due to an abominable non-conference record.

Win distribution chart (click for bigger):

This shows Ohio State slightly out in front, Wisconsin not far behind, and MSU and Michigan almost completely indistinguishable. Purdue, Indiana, and Illinois have near-identical win distributions as well, though not quite as nearly identical as MSU and Michigan.

Margin-aware system after the jump.

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Apologies for the delay in getting a recap up; it's taken me this long to unclench my disgust muscles. When you shoot 24% from the floor (eFG 26.7% thanks to a couple of threes), even 50% offensive rebounding can't save you. The gory details, in handy four-factors-chart form:

Much was made, by the commentators (and some comments after the game by players), of the ball possibly being overinflated. I wouldn't be surprised at all, as there were an unusual number of rim-outs, shots left short (which would be expected if the ball was a little heavier than normal), and wild long rebounds. (And this wouldn't be the first ball anomaly in recent memory at Illinois, even: they played seven minutes against Oakland last year with a women's-size basketball. If I were the equipment manager there, I'd be updating my resume right now.) If so, however, Illinois had to deal with it as well (and they didn't deal with it particularly well either - their shooting was only slightly less abysmal than ours).

Player notes after the jump.

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With 1/4 of conference play gone by, it's time to take an early look at the Big Ten basketball race using the Bradley-Terry and margin-aware Bradley-Terry ratings. Rather than listing every possibility (which would require a table twice as wide as that for football), I'll include graphs for the win distributions of various teams and a table of probabilities for winning the title (outright or shared) and finishing in the top 4 (thus earning a bye in the Big Ten tournament). The table is based on 100,000 simulations; in case of a tie for the final bye, tiebreaker rules are not used and each team involved in the tie is given a fraction of the credit for it (for instance, a three-way tie for 3rd gives 2/3 of a top-4 finish to each of the teams in the tie, as two of them will get a bye and one will not).

Basic (W-L only) Method

* indicates less than 0.01% (10 out of 100,000 simulations)

Of note is that nobody is expected to put up an especially gaudy (or especially miserable) record; despite being the top-ranked team (at #8) we're underdogs in four of our remaining games (road games at Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio State). Illinois has the advantage of not having to play at the Breslin Center (as does Northwestern). Indiana, with three games against the top five (@MSU, OSU, Michigan) already out of the way, has an easier remaining schedule than Michigan and thus vaults them despite the extra loss.

Now, a chart showing the win distribution (click for bigger):

Michigan State has a clear advantage, with Illinois slightly ahead of Indiana; Michigan and Ohio State are nearly indistinguishable, as are Wisconsin and Purdue and (at the far end) Nebraska and Penn State.

After the jump: the margin-aware method.

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Beating Wisconsin in the Kohl Center? Yeah, that's good enough reason for this video to make a quick return:

Apart from the usual Wisconsin pace (66 possessions even with the extra five minutes, equating to about 59 in regulation; Statsheet doesn't have anything up yet, so I'm going on the CBS boxscore), this could hardly have been more of a thriller. Neither team led by more than five in regulation. For most of the first half, Wisconsin held a lead as neither team could consistently make layups. After trailing 22-21 at the half, MSU spent most of the first few minutes trading buckets (and the lead) before a Derrick Nix layup with 14 minutes to go put the Spartans up 32-31. Michigan State would not trail the rest of the way, although there would be four more ties.

When Draymond Green picked up his fourth foul with nine minutes to go, Keith Appling took control with eight points in the next six minutes. Unfortunately, the Spartans could not pull away, as Jordan Taylor matched him basket for basket, at one point scoring 12 of Wisconsin's points in a row. MSU's shots went cold again in the final three minutes, and Wisconsin came back from down 50-45 to get Taylor to the free throw line with 36 seconds left and a chance to take the lead. He made the first but missed the second, and after a flurry of timeouts and Wisconsin's spare fouls (they had only been whistled for four to that point, astoundingly none in the first 11 minutes of the half - even Coach Izzo made mention of some disagreements with the refereeing after the game) Appling's off-balance jumper would not go.

In the extra frame, Green hit four free throws in the first minute, matched by two from Taylor and a Ryan Evans layup. MSU would score the next seven points - two Nix baskets, an Appling free throw, and two more FTs from Green - to take a 61-54 lead into the final 30 seconds. Then, for a moment, it seemed that the Kohl Center's magic had returned, as Taylor sank consecutive threes (including a deep, guarded bomb) sandwiching two Appling free throws to cut it to 63-60. With 10 seconds left, Green missed two free throws to give Wisconsin a chance. Taylor was unable to convert a third three-pointer, but Evans got the rebound and quickly dribbled out behind the arc. Evans's shot banked high off the glass and in, and the referees initially counted it, but replay showed that the ball was still in his hands when the backboard clock read 0.0 and the red light came on. Bizarrely, the clock on the display boards around the edges of the arena was not synced with the backboard clock and showed 0.1 left when the ball left Evans's hands, but the referees correctly ruled that the backboard clock was official and the shot was waved off.

Player notes and four factors after the jump.

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WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Well, that was exciting. The offense couldn't get anything going in the first half, but the defense kept us in it (even adding a pick-six to bring us within two points) and the offense finally got back on track, at least enough to even up the game in the final minute with a Keshawn Martin catch taking the ball down to the 1 yard line and a Le'Veon Bell bulldozer run to take it from there. It looked like it was over when Kirk Cousins was intercepted in the first overtime, but Georgia made no real attempt to move the ball forward and paid the price when their 42 yard FG attempt went wide. Both teams traded FGs in the second OT. In the third OT, a high but catchable third-down pass to Martin was dropped and forced us to attempt another FG, but the defense held strong with a near-interception, a William Gholston sack, and finally a blocked field goal by Anthony Rashad White (I think; box score doesn't say, my DVR won't let me rewind to it, and the wire recaps aren't up yet).

First bowl win since 2001. Back-to-back 11-win seasons. A full recap will have to wait for sanity to return. For now, WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Box score for the semifinal here; final here.

The semifinal went about as expected: Michigan Tech threw a lot of pucks at the net, but MSU made their shots count. Greg Wolfe scored a power play goal early to take the lead, and Chris Forfar made it 2-0 just before the middle of the game. Tech struck with a 5-on-3 goal from Ryan Furne with 12:32 to go in the game, but Drew Palmisano remained a wall in front of the net and kept the Spartans in front until Brett Perlini could seal the game with an empty-net goal. Tech outshot the Spartans 46-26 for the game, but there were few truly scary chances for the Huskies.

With Michigan upsetting Boston College in the other semifinal, the final was a rematch of the series three weeks ago. The opening strike didn't occur until past the midway point of the second period, with Tanner Sorensen putting the Spartans up 1-0. MSU carried that advantage into the third period, but the third period was not a good one.

Michigan absolutely dominated play in the third with a ridiculous 24-3 shots-on-goal advantage. A mid-period power play for the Wolverines was killed off, but MSU was never able to clear the puck and regroup, and about 30 seconds after the penalty expired, Michigan cashed in with a goal from Derek DeBlois. The Spartans regained the lead with just 7:28 to go on Perlini's second goal of the weekend off a beautiful feed from Kevin Walrod, but that was only a brief respite from the siege. An unfortunate penalty on Brent Darnell for tripping away from the play with just over two minutes to go only made matters worse. Michigan pulled goalie Shawn Hunwick for a 6-on-4 advantage at the one-minute mark, and Kevin Lynch deflected in a pass from the corner to force overtime, where Kevin Clare would eventually win it nearly 12 minutes in.

The good:

• Drew Palmisano set a GLI two-game record for saves with 90, 45 in each game. There were a couple of spectacular saves against Tech, but it was the Michigan game in particular where he made several outstanding stops. The final could easily have been a blowout if not for his heroics.
• Perlini scored once in each game, an empty net goal to seal the semifinal win and the third-period go-ahead goal.
• Torey Krug had two assists for the weekend and a +2 plus/minus rating. Krug, Palmisano, and Perlini all made the all-tournament team.

The bad:

• Being outshot 94-51 on the weekend. It's a mark of how spectacularly Palmisano played that we were in either game; you won't win too many games that way even with Ryan Miller in his heyday in net.
• A second chance at Boston College might have been helpful for Pairwise reasons; with our only Hockey East game for the year being the loss to them in the Icebreaker to start the season, the common games point against Hockey East teams is likely lost. A win over BC could have swung those comparisons, as most of Hockey East won't have a .500 record against them. (On the other hand, if those teams have played against CCHA teams or our other non-conference opponents, we're better off with only one loss instead of two, as all of their BC games will count anyway.) Insert usual rant about the absurdity of the Pairwise here (although there are certainly worse ways to go about it; we need only look at the BCS for proof).

Next up: MSU resumes conference play with home series against Miami-Ohio, Northern Michigan, and Lake Superior State the next three weekends.

What with the holidays and all, real life has been a bit busy. With that and data for hockey being rather sparse compared to the vast treasure troves we have for football or basketball, this is going to be a very short preview.

What is it? An annual four-team holiday invitational tournament co-hosted by Michigan State, Michigan, and Michigan Tech. The fourth team is different every year; this year it is Boston College.

When is it? 14th-ranked Michigan State faces off against Michigan Tech in the first semifinal (4:00 ET today); Michigan and Boston College play afterward (at approximately 7:30 ET, assuming the first semifinal doesn't go deep into overtime). The losers will play in the third-place game at 4:00 ET tomorrow, the winners in the title game at 7:30 ET. The title game will be on Fox College Sports Atlantic; other games will not be televised.

Who are these other teams? You know Michigan (ranked #20) well enough; we played them only three weeks ago. Of note, though: due to the 2012 World Juniors hockey tournament, Michigan will be without forward Jon Merrill. (Edit: commenter sullivti points out that Merrill hasn't played all year due to a suspension for "violation of team rules", so this isn't really a change from the last time we played.)

Michigan Tech is usually a doormat; two years ago we beat them 10-1 in the GLI opener. This year's team is no pushover, however, at 6-7-1 in the WCHA (which, most years, is to college hockey what the SEC claims to be to college football) and .500 overall, including a split at #2 Minnesota and a win and tie against #15 Denver. They are still, however, the least formidable of the four teams present on paper; they score just 2.84 goals per game to our 3.44 and Michigan's 3.55 and allow 2.89 to our 2.67 and Michigan's 2.65. Their scoring is remarkably balanced; Milos Gordic leads the way with just 7 goals (four on the power play), but three others have 6 and two have 5.

Boston College, on the other hand, comes in ranked #3 and leads Hockey East at 9-4-0 in conference, 12-6-0 overall. They are scoring 3.61 goals per game and allowing just 2.50. BC defeated us 5-2 in the season opener at the Icebreaker Tournament and are making their first appearance in the GLI since winning it in 2003. Like Michigan, however, they are missing a forward who is playing for Team USA at World Juniors (Bill Arnold). Arnold is their second-leading scorer, but they still pack plenty of punch up front: Chris Kreider has 12 goals (tied for 8th nationally) and Barry Almeida has 10.

My bold (and probably wrong) predictions for the tournament: Tech gives us a scare for a bit before we put them away, 4-2. Boston College wins handily in the other semifinal, 5-2. Michigan then wipes the floor with Tech in the third-place game, 5-1. With Arnold away, we're able to keep it more competitive against BC but fall 3-2 in the title game.

On a completely unrelated note: I plan to get the first set of basketball Bradley-Terry ratings up within the next day or two (have to make a few minor tweaks to the script to get the home/road data from Ken Pomeroy's database); next year should be quicker.

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