Sweet 16 Match-up: Memphis vs. Michigan State Prediction

It is always interesting to see how the tournaments are seeded. In the State of Tennessee, you had four teams competing in the tournament and all four were in different brackets. The University of Tennessee, located in the Eastern part of the State in Knoxville, was placed in the East region. Vanderbilt, located in the central part of the state in Nashville was placed in the Mid-West. Belmont, who almost upset Duke in the first round, is also located in Nashville but placed in the West region. What is interesting is that Belmont is actually further East than Vanderbilt, so really that should have been switched around. And Memphis, in the south-western corner of the state was placed logically in the South Region. While we can argue about placement, no one can argue that Memphis did not deserve to be a number 1 seed in the South Region. Memphis looks to continue their dominance this season with a match-up versus a good Michigan State team. To see who wins, let's look at a couple of key areas: regular season and the tournament play.

Regular Season

Memphis had quite possibly the finest season of anyone this past year. The Tigers went 33-1 with their only lost coming from a good Texas team in the final minute of the game. While some have argued that Memphis is in a weak conference, so they are over-ratted, you only have to look at their non-conference schedule to see how good they have been this past year. The Tigers have won games over several teams that are represented in the NCAA Tournament. Those teams include a number 4 seeded Conneticut team that was upset in round 1, a number 2 seeded Georgetown team, a number 6 seeded USC team, a number 10 seeded Arizona team and the number 7 seeded Gonzaga team. While all of those teams have been knocked out before they reached the Sweet 16, it is clear that Memphis didn't just walk through the regular season. At the end, they were ranked as high as the number 1 team in the nation but have to settle for the number 3 ranked team going into the tournament.

Michigan State has had an up and down season so far. The Spartans started off hot making it the number 7 ranked team behind an impressive 19-2 record. Then the wheels came off in February. The Spartans lost 3 out of 4 games and 5 of their final 6 road games. Also, their offense seemed to go into hibernation as they only scored 36 points against Iowa and only 42 against Wisconsin. The Spartans ended the season with a 25-8 record and the number 20 ranking in the polls. This is not what you want happening to your team going into the month of March. In fact, Michigan State lost a total of 8 games to the likes of Purdue, Indiana, Penn State, UCLA and Ohio State. The biggest problem with Michigan State is that they are messy averaging a negative turnover rate of 1.35 per game. Turning the ball over more than you take it away is a sure way to lose games against quality teams. Being sloppy and turnover happy is okay against weaker opponents, but will kill you against better teams.

The Tournament

Memphis started out with an easy win against the number 16 seeded UTA team winning by 24 points. Their second match-up against Mississippi State was a lot closer than they probably would have liked winning by only 3 points. However, Memphis has continued to pill up the wins behind their two star guards Derrick Rose and Chris Douglas-Roberts. Together, this duo has combined for 31 points per game and are go-to guys.

Michigan State has seemingly turned things around from their February fall to win two good games by 9 points each. However, their average scoring is quite low with an average of just 65.5 points per game. As shown with their low point wins late in the season, scoring a lot of points is not what Michigan State has done well lately. This seems a bit odd since their average field-goal percentage is a league high 48.6%. But again, it is the sloppiness that is causing them not to score as many points as their field-goal percentage would suggest.

Match-up

In the end, Memphis is going to continue their dominance this season with another win over Michigan State. Memphis just has too good of a team to contend with. Their starting guards along with the 6 foot 9 inch, 265 pound Senior Joey Dorsey in the paint will be too much for Michigan State to overcome.

Final Score: Memphis 82, Michigan State 70