Spartans Meet Wolverines: The Schedules

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.

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