Senior center Drew Naymick reacts to MSU’s placement in the NCAA Tournament during the selection show Sunday evening at Breslin Center. MSU will face Temple during the first round of the tournament Thursday in Denver.
The MSU men’s basketball team didn’t know much about the Temple Owls when it was revealed the two teams would meet in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, but The Spartans were confident it would only be a matter of hours before they were well educated.
The Spartans (25-8), who boast one of the best video scouting systems in the country, will face Temple (21-12) on Thursday in the Denver first-round site. MSU is a five seed in the South Region, while Temple is a 12 seed.
“As most games go this time of year, you have to scout the opponent but you have to get your team playing well and I think that’s what our emphasis has to be on,” MSU head coach Tom Izzo said in a news conference after the games were announced. “It still comes down to not who coaches or what they do — it comes down to how they play. We’ve got to play and we’ve got to play for 40 minutes.”
The Spartans are 5-6 against the Owls in the program’s history, with the last meeting coming during the NCAA Tournament in 2001, when the Spartans won, 69-62. That was the only Spartans victory against Temple on a neutral floor. MSU is 4-2 on neutral floors this season.
The two teams don’t have any opponents in common, but the Owls lost to quality opponents such as Tennessee, Florida, Villanova, Duke, Saint Joseph’s and Dayton. They won the Atlantic 10 conference tournament this weekend, defeating Saint Joseph’s 69-64 in the championship.
“They won that A-10 tournament with a lot of good teams in it,” senior center Drew Naymick said. “It’s a strong field this year; all teams are dangerous. We’ll be ready to go this weekend.”
The Spartans — one of four Big Ten teams (Wisconsin, MSU, Purdue and Indiana) to make it into the tournament — are coming off a Big Ten Tournament semifinal loss to Wisconsin, 65-63.
“We have to move on,” junior center Goran Suton said. “We have to forget about that. This is a bigger stage. This is the most important time of the year right now.”
The Owls are led by Dionte Christmas, who averages 20.2 points and six rebounds a game. Christmas and their second-leading scorer, Mark Tyndale (15.9 points per game), are the only two players to average more than nine points per contest.
Should the Spartans win, they will face the winner of four-seed Pittsburgh (26-9) and 13-seed Oral Roberts (24-8). Both teams won their respective conference tournaments, making MSU the only team in the region’s foursome without a title this season.
“There’s no facts and no points any better to look at than we’d be playing two teams that won their conference championships,” Izzo said. “But you could make an argument that one team should have.”
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