#155 ASA PLAY ON Michigan State +4.5 over Michigan, Saturday at 7:30 PM ET - Huge coaching advantage here in our opinion with MSU’s Jonathan Smith (formerly at Oregon State) vs Michigan’s Sherrone Moore. Smith showed his coaching prowess last week coming out of a bye and roasting a good Iowa team 32-20 as a home underdog. To be honest, the score probably shouldn’t have even been that close as Sparty dominated 27 first downs to 12 and 468 total yards to 283 for the Hawkeyes. Meanwhile, a poorly coached Michigan team also came off a bye and lost 21-7 at Illinois as a 3 point favorite. Michigan State is now 4-3 but keep in mind, 2 of their losses came at the hands of Oregon and Ohio State who are currently ranked #1 and #4 in the nation respectively. Their other loss came 23-19 @ Boston College but MSU won the stat sheet in that game but had 4 turnovers. The Wolverines continue to be overvalued living off last year’s success. In fact, they’ve only covered 1 game this season (1-6 ATS) and their 2 wins in Big 10 play have both come at home by just 3 points while their losses were both by double digits. This team could easily be 0-4 in conference play. The Michigan offense is simply bad ranking 120th in total offense and 113th in YPP. They were hoping with Jack Tuttle back under center last week at Illinois the offense would get a jump start. Didn’t happen as they scored only 7 points and Tuttle wasn’t great. These 2 rivals have played nearly identical strength of schedules and MSU has the better stats (MSU +42 YPG and +0.7 YPP / Michigan -19 YPG and +0.0 YPP). This is a huge game for MSU as they’ve lost back to back years on blowout fashion to the Wolverines but they get their chance to make amends here with Michigan way down compared to previous editions. Take the points.