Top NCAA Showdown: Kansas vs. Michigan State Preview

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00:00It's Bill Self and Tom Izzo. It's number one Kansas and Michigan State. KU the only team,

00:09John, that you mentioned of the four in the Champions Classic that has played power conference

00:13competition. What a game it was. The top ten tilt on Friday night in Lawrence as KU held off the

00:19second half charge from North Carolina to win 92-89 in a high scoring affair. So perhaps earlier on,

00:26the Jayhawks battle tested and the number one team in the land a six and a half point favorite

00:31against Sporty tonight. Just how competitive, John, do you expect the opener in Atlanta to look?

00:37You know, I consider Kansas to be a heavy favorite in this game simply because I am not sure if

00:42Michigan State will be able to match up inside with Hunter Dickinson. You know, I talked to Tom

00:46Izzo about this yesterday. There's a lot of question marks with this Michigan State team.

00:52Jaden Akins is obviously somebody you can look to as a go-to guy, but after that there's a lot

00:57of questions with Michigan State. Izzo knows that the jumps of sophomores Jeremy Fierce,

01:02Cohen Carr, and Xavier Booker is exceptionally important for this Michigan State team. He also

01:08knows that Michigan State at some point is going to have to identify a secondary scorer behind

01:15Jaden Akins. Will it be Jackson Kohler? Will it be somebody like Xavier Booker? Will it be Frankie

01:21Fidler, the transfer from Omaha? There's still a lot of questions for the team from East Lansing,

01:26but I do want to point out Tom Izzo believes that Jeremy Fierce, the point guard who redshirted last

01:32season, can eventually have a four-year impact like a Mateen Cleaves, a Kaelin Lucas, a Cassius

01:39Winston, and here is a staggering, staggering thing that stood out from Michigan State's first

01:44two games. During that span, Ben, Fierce's assist to turnover ratio is 16 to 3. That's something I

01:50can read into. Yeah, absolutely so, and he is going to be the orchestrator of the offense

01:56in East Lansing. John, to your point, hasn't been great competition yet for MSU, just Monmouth and

02:01Niagara, but Book does a 20-point favorite at least in both. The Spartans have covered both

02:08of those numbers.