Ohio State vs. Michigan State: Betting Odds, Matchup Stats, Preview

The Ohio State Buckeyes will be visiting the Michigan State Spartans in a marquee Big Ten college basketball matchup Saturday, with the Buckeyes having won three of their past four meetings with the Spartans both straight up and against the spread heading into the weekend contest.

The hosts opened as 1.5-point favorites at most online shops mid Friday.

The Buckeyes and Spartans are vying for second place in the Big Ten standings behind the conference-leading Wisconsin Badgers. Wisconsin sits atop the Big Ten standings with a 10-1 mark in league play heading into the weekend, while Ohio State and Michigan State were among five teams in the conference with four losses apiece as of Thursday night.

The Buckeyes and Maryland Terrapins each have eight Big Ten wins on their resume this season, while the Spartans have seven, with three of those coming in their last four games.

Michigan State is coming off a 68-44 rout of the Northwestern Wildcats on Tuesday as a 7.5-point road favorite at sportsbooks monitored by OddsShark, rebounding from a bad 59-54 loss to the Illinois Fighting Illini three days earlier as 10-point home chalk. The Spartans have disappointed their backers lately by failing to cover the spread in six of their past eight games despite winning five of them.

Ohio State has won five of its last six games, going 4-2 ATS following a 75-55 blowout win over the Penn State Nittany Lions on Wednesday as an 11.5-point home favorite on the college basketball betting lines at the online sportsbooks. The team’s lone loss during that stretch came on the road against the Purdue Boilermakers by a score of 60-58 on February 4 as a 1-point favorite.

The Buckeyes are in the midst of a tough stretch—playing four of five games away from home—that wraps up with a visit to the Michigan Wolverines on February 22. However, freshman guard D’Angelo Russell has emerged for them as one of the best players in the country, averaging a team-high 19.4 points to go along with 5.5 assists per game while leading the conference with 21.3 and 5.7 in Big Ten games.