College Basketball Betting – Michigan State at (5) Wisconsin

Michigan State Spartans at (5) Wisconsin Badgers

The No. 5 Wisconsin Badgers (23-3, 13-2 Big Ten) will look to rebound from their second conference loss of the year today – and clinch at least a share of the Big Ten regular season title – when they host the Michigan State Spartans (19-9, 10-5 Big Ten) at the Kohl Center in Madison (4:00 p.m. Eastern).

On Tuesday, the Badgers were downed by the No. 14 Terrapins in Maryland (59-53). Wisconsin scored just 20 points in the first half and found themselves down 11 at the break. The team mounted a second-half comeback, but couldn’t finish the job late.

“We were close a couple of times but we just couldn’t do it. It’s definitely frustrating,” Senior forward and Wooden Award front-runner Frank Kaminsky told the AP after the game.

Kaminksy had another solid game for Wisconsin, scoring 18 points on 50-percent shooting. Despite the loss, Kaminsky thinks his squad may benefit from the experience: “We’ve had a great season so far. We haven’t really been tested like this many times like this. … I think we’re going to learn a lot from it.”

The Spartans, meanwhile, dropped their last game in OT to Minnesota (96-90) at home.  Michigan State got 27 points from Denzel Valentine and 21 from Travis Trice, but it wasn’t enough, as the Spartans went just 19/29 from the charity stripe and allowed the Gophers to shoot nearly 52-percent from the floor.

In the trends, Spartans have dominated the Badgers of late. Michigan State is 6-1  are 1-6 SU in their last seven against Wisconsin. They’ve been equally good betting-wise, going 4-1 ATS in the last five in Madison.

The total has stayed under in four of the last five head-to-head meetings.

(Photo credit: Richard Hurd (flickr) [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode]. Photo has been cropped.)