Winning in East Lansing is rare. On Friday, Michigan basketball trailed for just 16 seconds to Tom Izzo's fiery bunch of Spartans. For Dusty May, it's his watershed moment in year two as the head honcho of the maize and blue. Let's take a look at some of the most glaring takeaways from Friday night's euphoric 83-71 win at the Breslin Center.
A 28-14 run put Michigan State away after the under eight minute television timeout
Seven and a half minutes to go in East Lansing, and Michigan State held its first lead of the night. 30 seconds later, they went up by a deuce again, only to see it evaporate for good with a timely three by Will Tschetter. Elliot Cadeau's triple with three minutes on the clock was the dagger. Then Michigan's players stepped to the free-throw line to send the Spartans packing into the winter cold to claim the conference's most glamorous road win.
Records indicate that Michigan has never won 10 games in the Big Ten by the end of January before
Not even during the John Beilein days has Michigan basketball ever won this many games in the conference before the month of February. In 2014, they had eight wins entering the month. During the Fab Five era, they never accomplished the feat, and besides, most of that tenure was vacated anyway. The Wolverines are basically a 3-pointer away from being 11-0 and setting a new record that hasn't been done before, to my knowledge. The closest team to do it was the 1976 Indiana Hoosiers, who won the national championship.
Entering this week, #5 Nebraska and #7 MSU had two combined losses.
— Drew Hallett (@DrewCHallett) January 31, 2026
Michigan handed them two this week.
Based solely off of rankings alone, nobody boasts a better pure road win then this
Iowa State's win at Purdue topped the list in December, but Purdue has since dropped off, and the Cyclones lost a pair of games a couple of weeks ago. So, going with the current top 25 list, Michigan basketball beat one of the last unbeaten teams in the sport and its top 10 brethren in the span of four days. No other school can pump its chest out and claim that. It means that Michigan is carrying the conference's torch.