IU to battle Spartans in fight for Big Ten conference title

Recent history suggests the IU men’s basketball team will have a hard time winning Sunday afternoon against Michigan State.\nThe No. 12 Hoosiers (24-4, 13-2) have come up short versus Michigan State (22-6, 10-5) in their last 13 visits to East Lansing despite having several close games with the Spartans.\nIU interim coach Dan Dakich said the high-quality program Michigan State coach Tom Izzo has created will make it tough for the Hoosiers to get the team’s first win in East Lansing since 1991. The Hoosiers will need to win Sunday in order to stay atop of the Big Ten standings. \n“They have really good players and a really good coach – \nthat makes a difference,” Dakich said. “I think that those two things makes that (winning at MSU) difficult. Michigan State is one of the best programs in America.”\nLast season at MSU, the Hoosiers had a 10-point halftime lead before being outscored by 18 points in the second half, eventually losing the game, 66-58.\nIU will have to overcome its road woes against the Spartans to keep pace with co-conference leaders Purdue and Wisconsin in the race for the Big Ten championship. All three teams have two conference losses and would split the title if each team were to win out in conference play.\nThe Hoosiers will have to put distractions surrounding the resignation of former coach Kelvin Sampson behind them as the team tries to win its first Big Ten championship since 2002, sophomore guard Armon Bassett said.\n“We have to focus on our task,” Bassett said after IU’s win over Ohio State.\nIn their first meeting this season on Feb. 16, the Hoosiers defeated Michigan State 80-61 without the services of senior forward D.J. White, who missed the entire second half after suffering a knee injury. Freshman guard Eric Gordon scored 28 points on 9-of-15 shooting.\nIU will likely need another strong performance from Gordon if the Hoosiers want to hand the Spartans their first home loss of the season, as the freshman will look to bounce back from a poor shooting effort against Ohio State on Tuesday.\nGordon scored 17 points on just 4-of-16 shooting against the Buckeyes – one of his worst shooting performances in a Hoosier uniform, Gordon said after the game.\n“As long as we get the win, it’s fine,” Gordon said, adding he hasn’t had many games like that in his career. “But it was kind of frustrating just not hitting my shot.”\nDakich said in his Thursday weekly press conference that the team is fatigued from a long season and the events from the past two weeks. The team took Wednesday off and planned on having a light practice Thursday before starting major preparation for the Spartans.\nThough the rest is needed, Dakich said the Hoosiers need to keep working hard to achieve their goal of a Big Ten championship.\n“We have to play well,” Dakich said. “We have to continue to do better as we go through this.”