Media Prediction Thread: Minnesota at Michigan State

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Picks & Parlay's first out of the gate:

Minnesota has covered the number in each of the last four played at Michigan State and the Golden Gophers have covered the number in seven of the last eight overall against the Spartans. Minnesota is tough on offense scoring an average of 49.7 points per game and the Golden Gophers give up very little on defense, allowing an average of only 5.7 points per game. Final Score Prediction, Minnesota Golden Gophers win and cover ATS 24-20.

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Minnesota at Michigan State 9/24/22 - College Football Picks & Predictions

The Minnesota Golden Gophers visit Spartan Stadium in East Lansing, Michigan on Saturday to play the No.11 ranked Michigan State Spartans.
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Go Gophers!!
 

Picks & Parlays have the odds listed as Minnesota -2.

Has the line moved?
 


On Draftkings now Minnesota -2.5, money must be going on us nationally. Kind of surprises me with CrAB out. Bettors who watched MSU/Washington really were not impressed by that Spartan performance. I was rooting for MSU, because I wanted to beat a top 10 team and figured Sparty may over look us.
 

Spartans Wire (USA Today) has a prediction with Michigan State winning 31-27
Minnesota has looked very impressive so far this year but they have yet to face an opponent like Michigan State. Like many, I’m not particularly high on the Spartans after Saturday’s beat down loss at Washington but … there’s still plenty of talent on this roster to expect a bounce back performance. Spartans quarterback Payton Thorne looked sharp on Saturday and if the offense can get just a little bit of production on the ground then I like them to win this one at home.

Sports Chat Place is picking Minnesota in the match-up
I get why Michigan State opened as a favorite, but while Minnesota’s numbers may be a bit inflated by inferior competition, the reality here is that they have steamrolled everyone they’ve faced so far. Michigan State was opened up and exposed for much of that game against Washington and I have to wonder how the Golden Gophers will use that to their advantage. Head-to-head, the Gophers have had a ton of the recent success against Michigan State (????) and I expect that to continue here.

Odd Shark has Minnesota winning 38-22
Minnesota will win, cover the spread, and the total will go over.
 








The Daily Gopher has Minnesota edging Michigan State 24-21
This is a P.J. Fleck offense, and the first stat he looks at after each game is the time of possession. He wants sustained scoring drives that eat up the clock, limiting the Spartans’ opportunities on offense. To do that, all Minnesota really needs Morgan to do is keep the Michigan State defense honest and make sure the Gophers have a numbers advantage of up front.

If Minnesota’s offensive line can consistently win at the line of scrimmage and create lanes for Mohamed Ibrahim to run, I like their chances of winning this game. My heart is telling me Minnesota. My head is telling me Michigan State. Screw it. This is a Gophers site, after all.
 

This is why the ranking system is so funny...1 week ago Michigan St was #11 in the country. We were and still are not ranked. They lose one game on the road (many teams still ranked have done the same) and now 12 of 17 people have us going on the road to beat them.

If the #11 team in the country can fall so far they probably shouldn't be anywhere close to #11 EVER.
 

tmvander said:
This is why the ranking system is so funny...1 week ago Michigan St was #11 in the country. We were and still are not ranked. They lose one game on the road (many teams still ranked have done the same) and now 12 of 17 people have us going on the road to beat them.

If the #11 team in the country can fall so far they probably shouldn't be anywhere close to #11 EVER.
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Totally, the rankings for the first four to five weeks, other than the sure-fire ones like Alabama and Ohio State being at the top, are always a bit of a guessing game in my view. It seems to be based on last year's results, how many high ranked recruits the team has and overall name recognition of the school.
 

tmvander said:
This is why the ranking system is so funny...1 week ago Michigan St was #11 in the country. We were and still are not ranked. They lose one game on the road (many teams still ranked have done the same) and now 12 of 17 people have us going on the road to beat them.

If the #11 team in the country can fall so far they probably shouldn't be anywhere close to #11 EVER.
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That may be true about early rankings, but what is your suggestion for improvement? There are a relatively small number of teams that you can be virtually certain will be high in the polls throughout the season (Georgia, Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson (mostly), Oklahoma, possibly Michigan, and perhaps a couple of others depending upon the year). Everyone else is a bit of a crapshoot. So, it's not surprising that people go with recent history supplemented by a little more knowledge that is readily available.

Michigan State has been kind of down through most of the last six years but they had a fine year last year so it's not surprising to see them ranked in the initial polls. They also returned their QB who was one of the better ones in the conference last year so that helped. They didn't do anything to tumble until the most recent game. Washington looked great against MSU but they weren't ranked until after that game because they finished only 4-8 last year.
 



tmvander said:
This is why the ranking system is so funny...1 week ago Michigan St was #11 in the country. We were and still are not ranked. They lose one game on the road (many teams still ranked have done the same) and now 12 of 17 people have us going on the road to beat them.

If the #11 team in the country can fall so far they probably shouldn't be anywhere close to #11 EVER.
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This would require the pollsters to be able to see into the future, which to my knowledge they do not have the ability to do.
 

I see what some of you are saying but if a team is indeed #11 in the country they shouldn't fall out of the top 25 and be favored to lose at home to their next opponent who is also not ranked. If that is the case they shouldn't be ranked #11 to begin with.
 

The Gophers finished last year 9-4 with a win streak and a bowl game victory. They got back key running backs and their QB returned for ‘22.

They followed that up with three blow out wins over admittedly lower end opponents to start ‘22.

Yet, a quarter of the way through this season the team still isn’t ranked. Where would South Carolina or Mississippi State be ranked right now with the exact same resume?

Texas moved UP into the rankings after a loss, but Alabama didn’t suffer much at all after struggling with Texas.

There is so much bias going on and it is frustrating that TV coverage, media talking points, exposure, etc. all depend on these dumb early season rankings.
 

tmvander said:
I see what some of you are saying but if a team is indeed #11 in the country they shouldn't fall out of the top 25 and be favored to lose at home to their next opponent who is also not ranked. If that is the case they shouldn't be ranked #11 to begin with.
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You are absolutely nailing why the pre-season rankings are such a waste of time and are just guesses. You see big corrections like the one that happened with Michigan State early in the year when that team finally loses a game.

This is another problem with the rankings, when a team is ranked too high but keeps on winning it is next to impossible to drop them down.

Pre-season rankings, pre and early season bowl projections, conference predictions....it is all just stuff to give fans something to talk about and networks something to hype. It is all worthless until you get part way through the season and actually find out which teams are good and which aren't.
 

Schnauzer said:
The Gophers finished last year 9-4 with a win streak and a bowl game victory. They got back key running backs and their QB returned for ‘22.

They followed that up with three blow out wins over admittedly lower end opponents to start ‘22.
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I think the problem is that these 3 are worse than lower end opponents - they're bottom of the barrel opponents.

Most of the people who vote in these national polls probably don't have the time to watch a bunch of games throughout the country and extensively review box scores and team stats. It's pretty easy to just look up a metric of a team's schedule strength, though.

You'll note that Big Ten power rankings of school fan pages are rating us pretty highly within the conference. The people who write these pay far more attention to the various teams throughout the league.

If the Gophers win this Saturday, I think they will be ranked and I won't be sore that they weren't ranked earlier. If they lose this Saturday after being ranked, they would immediately drop from the rankings and I think I would be more bummed about that than I would be if they weren't ranked.
 

MNVCGUY said:
You are absolutely nailing why the pre-season rankings are such a waste of time and are just guesses. You see big corrections like the one that happened with Michigan State early in the year when that team finally loses a game.
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We have these preseason and early season rankings because fans want them, warts and all, so there's no point in complaining about their flaws.
 

cjbfbp said:
We have these preseason and early season rankings because fans want them, warts and all, so there's no point in complaining about their flaws.
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I don't mind the rankings but they are so flawed. Most voters to little research about how good those teams realistically should be at the start of the season. Half the time they just go with name recognition/reputation.
 


cjbfbp said:
We have these preseason and early season rankings because fans want them, warts and all, so there's no point in complaining about their flaws.
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True, we all love the rankings but it can perceive things for all involved in college football. Ranked teams get more exposure setting them up for future success as well as have a better chance of being noticed by those making decisions on the college football playoff conversation.

There are more negative effects besides "woops I guess Mich St wasn't as good as we thought"
 


Rankings, including recruiting rankings, are flawed. If we beat MSU and the perception is that they weren't any good, then we go on to beat Purdue and the perception is that they weren't any good, then we go on to beat the next team, and the next team, and the next team...
At some point, reality catches up to the rankings.

If we make it to Indy, the expectation will be that we'll just get mowed down by the OSU/MI buzzsaw. But what happens if we don't? What if MN actually WINS the B1G? What will the rankings say?

Recruiting rankings it's the same thing. Even PJ Fleck remarked in a recent media appearance on KFAN recruiting stars...something to the affect of we only have a handful of 4 star recruits and sometimes the 4 stars become 3 stars once they commit to MN just because they are committing to MN!
 

Back to media predictions...

On BTN during B1G Today, Urban Meyer and Dave Wannstedt both think MN can beat MSU. Here they are previewing the game with Dave Revsine:

 

jonnyganas said:
Back to media predictions...

On BTN during B1G Today, Urban Meyer and Dave Wannstedt both think MN can beat MSU. Here they are previewing the game with Dave Revsine:

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For those that may have been a little confused like I was - The MN vs. MSU part isn't until 37 minutes into the video and the guy to the far right at that point is actually ex head coach Dave Wannstadt as opposed to Joshua Perry. :)
 

MNVCGUY said:
For those that may have been a little confused like I was - The MN vs. MSU part isn't until 37 minutes into the video and the guy to the far right at that point is actually ex head coach Dave Wannstadt as opposed to Joshua Perry. :)
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The YouTube link jumps to the 37 minute mark where they begin to preview the MN vs MSU game.
You can stream it (press play) right from this forum thread.
 

jonnyganas said:
The YouTube link jumps to the 37 minute mark where they begin to preview the MN vs MSU game.
You can stream it (press play) right from this forum thread.
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I know, just having some fun with the fact that that clearly was not Dave Wannstadt in the thumbnail :)
 

MNVCGUY said:
I know, just having some fun with the fact that that clearly was not Dave Wannstadt in the thumbnail :)
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Coach W has been reading GH. He said if you watch film of our three games and put a different team name on the shirts they would be thought of more highly.
 

Fan Duel’s prediction is Michigan State winning 28-23
It's fairly shocking to see Minnesota as the road favorite here. After all, the Golden Gophers have lost five straight games against the Spartans, with the latest loss — a 30-27 final score — taking place in 2017. Keeping that in mind, I expect that Michigan State will get the win on Saturday.

The truth is that the Golden Gophers haven't been tested much, if at all, this season. While the Spartans didn't get the win last week, they at least looked good in the second half against a Huskies team that's now ranked No. 18 in the nation. With this being Minnesota's first challenge of the year, I'm counting on Michigan State to bounce back.

Bet Us is predicting a Minnesota victory
Although the game is at Spartan Stadium, Minnesota is the slight favorite due to Michigan State’s uninspiring performance against Washington last week.

Minnesota’s been performing at a high level thus far, and while they should continue that trend, this will bring out a tougher opponent in the conference opener. The Spartans, meanwhile, already had a taste of good competition last week.

Expect the game to be close, but the Golden Gophers to stay undefeated and cover.
 

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