Analyzing the Rivalry: Wisconsin Basketball vs. Michigan State

The hiring of then-Milwaukee head coach Bo Ryan yielded little fanfare outside the city of Madison.

Other than an improbable run to the Final Four in 2000, there had been few bright spots since the Badgers hung their 1947 Big Ten championship banner. Not only were there no Big Ten titles over that 54-year stretch, but Wisconsin also had four times as many losing seasons (32) as top-four finishes in the league (eight). There were just four NCAA tournament appearances, including 47 straight seasons without one.

So, when Dick Bennett abruptly retired in November 2000, he took with him some of the excitement as the Badgers stumbled to a 13-loss season and a first-round upset. Ryan and associate head coach Greg Gard didn’t wait long to change the culture.

Winning back-to-back Big Ten titles in their first two seasons, the Badgers have been dominant in winning 71.1 percent of its games during Ryan’s 14 seasons as head coach and in the last six-plus seasons under Gard (498-202 through Jan.20). UW has won eight Big Ten titles, appeared in 18 of the last 19 NCAA tournaments, and advanced to two Final Fours.

Since Ryan and Gard arrived, Wisconsin has the most Big Ten wins and the best winning percentage in the conference at 247-114 (.684) and has flipped many conference rivalries that had long been one-sided affairs.

Over the course of this Big Ten season, BadgerBlitz will examine Wisconsin’s series with the 13 other conference teams, what it was before Ryan and Gard arrived, what the series looks like now, and some memorable moments along the way.

Today, we look at Wisconsin’s series with Michigan State.

RELATED: Iowa | Maryland | Ohio State | Northwestern |

Pre 2001-02: Michigan State led 63-47

Since 2001-02: Michigan State leads 20-19

Ryan’s Record vs. Michigan State: 16-12 (2-8 in East Lansing, Mich., 4-2 neutral)

Gard’s Record vs. Michigan State: 3-8 (1-4 in East Lansing, 0-2 neutral)

Record when both teams were ranked: Ryan 3-7; Gard 1-2

When Wisconsin was ranked, Michigan State was not: Ryan 8-2, Gard 0-1

When Michigan State was ranked, Wisconsin was not: Ryan 4-3, Gard 2-5

When both teams were unranked: Ryan 1-0, Gard 0-0

Michigan State didn’t join the Big Ten until 1949 but the two schools played 13 times before that. The first seven games were played in Madison and UW was 9-4 overall. In fact, Wisconsin held an all-time lead in the series throughout the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, including a March 1979 victory when Wes Matthews hit a 50-footer at the buzzer to beat the Spartans, 83-81, at the UW Fieldhouse.

UW stopped leading in the series in 1986 during a six-game losing streak and haven’t led since the early 90s, a decade where the Spartans went 14-7 against the Badgers.

Tom Izzo took over the head coaching job at Michigan State for the 1995-96 season and lost both meetings in the 1995-96 season. Over the next five seasons, the Spartans went 12-1 against the Badgers, including beating UW four times in 2000 (twice in the regular season, once in Big Ten tournament, and once in Final Four) on MSU’s journey to the national championship.

Under Ryan: One of the great Wisconsin/Big Ten stories two decades ago was the Badgers' inability to lose to Michigan State with Ryan at the helm.

The first such meeting in 2002 set the tone for memorable moments, as officials waved off an alley-oop layup to give UW a 64-63 win at the Breslin Center. It was the program’s first road victory in the series since 1996 and snapped the nation’s longest home winning streak at 53 games in the process. Two years later, UW bested Michigan State again on the road, 68-64 in overtime, in a game remembered for the Spartans having a rolled-up Big Ten title banner ready to be displayed with a victory. Eleven days later, UW beat Michigan State, 68-66, in the Big Ten Tournament on its way to the school’s first tournament title.

The great moments happened at home, too. The following season, Wisconsin rallied from an eight-point deficit in the final 1:55 by scoring the game’s final 11 points in a three-point win.

Izzo eventually ended the torment by breaking Ryan’s 6-0 start against him with a home win in 2005 and won three of the next four, including a 64-55 victory just after UW ascended to No.1 in the nation for the first and only time. But thanks to Kam Taylor’s 3-pointer on senior day 11 days later, the Badgers won the next four in the series.

Michigan State won nine of 12 between 2009 and 2013, removing some of the “Bo Owns Izzo” mystic, but Ryan won his last two games during UW's national title game run.

From 2002 until Ryan's retirement, Wisconsin was the only Big Ten team to have a winning record against Michigan State (minimum of three games), as the Badgers average Big Ten finish was a half place higher than the Spartans.

Under Gard: Thrust into the interim role, Gard had seen his team lose four of their first five Big Ten games when No.4 Michigan State came to the Kohl Center. What transpired was an uplifting 77-76 January victory – one that saw Bronson “The Spartan Killer” Koenig score 27, Nigel Hayes add 25, and freshman Ethan Happ hit a layup with 10 seconds left - that helped propelled the Badgers the second half of the season and eventually to the Sweet 16. Unfortunately, it was a long time before there were more magical moments on the UW side.

Starting by winning the rematch just over a month later, Michigan State won eight straight meetings in the series, four coming by double digits at the Breslin Center and another two in the Big Ten tournament. There were two home losses that were especially painful, a 68-63 one in 2018 when Brad Davison scored 30 and a 69-57 one the following year where UW scored just 21 second-half points and faltered on both ends in the final minute.

The last two games, however, have been redeeming. With some fans calling for Gard’s firing, Davison serving a one-game suspension, and leading scorer Kobe King announcing he’d transfer, Wisconsin snapped the streak with a 64-63 victory behind 15 points from Nate Reuvers, 14 points from D’Mitrik Trice, and a career-high-tying 13 from Aleem Ford. UW won nine of its final 10 to clinch a share of the conference crown.

As sweet as that was for the players, Wisconsin ended a 12-game/16-year losing streak at the Breslin Center on Christmas Day 2020. In a game that featured 10 ties and seven lead changes, Trice – in the same arena his brother, Travis, starred in for Izzo – scored 29 points as the Badgers shot 51.9 percent from the floor.

Wisconsin head coach Bo Ryan on the challenges – or lack thereof – of preparing his team for Michigan State.

“The better teams didn’t have 97 different ways of doing things. They were very good at what they did. Michigan State was easy to prepare for. They just got better athletes, they are going to push it, but if you can get them to slow it down and run more half-court offense, it increased your chance to beat them. Obviously, they were very consistent. They were a very good team. They did what they did well and if you didn’t take that away from them, if you didn’t take transition baskets away from them, if you didn’t block out and get on the glass, you weren’t going to be successful against them. Fortunately, 16 times we did do that.”

There are so many choices to elaborate on: snapping the 53-game win streak, the banner game, Kam Taylor’s and Traevon Jackson’s buzzer beaters, and a pair of home wins under Gard that changed the course of those seasons.

There also is usually a ton at stake. Over the last 20 years, UW and Michigan State have an average conference finish of 3.05 (Ryan’s team actually finished .50 places ahead of Izzo’s over Bo’s 14-year run). And including Thursday's matchup, at least one team has been ranked in 39 of the last 40 meetings.

UW was ranked sixth and looking for a Big Ten title sweep when the Badgers met the Spartans in the finals of the 2015 Big Ten tournament in Chicago.

It wasn’t looking promising, not with Michigan State leading 57-46 with 7 minutes, 46 seconds left, but the Badgers scored 11 straight in a 2-minute stretch and grabbed a 60-59 lead on Koenig’s 3-pointer with 4:16 left.

A 5-0 Michigan State run put them back ahead, 69-67, with 45 seconds remaining, but UW charged back. Helped by Josh Gasser’s leaping into press row to save a loose ball, Sam Dekker stole a bad pass from Denzel Valentine and Koenig hit two free throws to tie it at 69-all with 15 seconds remaining.

The game went to overtime after Branden Dawson missed a 15-footer as time expired. The extra five minutes was a Wisconsin coronation. The Badgers outscored Michigan State 11-0 in overtime for an 80-69 victory, earning the school’s third league tournament title and the program’s first No.1 seed in the NCAA tournament.

Hayes scored 25 points, Kaminsky added 19 and Koenig scored 18, as Wisconsin finished the final 11½ minutes of the game on a 31-10 run.

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