Saturday’s Michigan/MSU basketball game postponed

The Michigan Wolverines and Michigan State Spartans were set to face off for the first time this season later this afternoon, but that will have to wait just a little bit longer due to COVID issues within U-M’s team. The program made the news official Saturday morning.

The Wolverines were able to fight through some COVID issues on Tuesday at Rutgers and played without the likes of Brandon Johns, Terrance Williams and Frankie Collins. But for this game, they would have less than seven players available, which is the least amount of players in the Big Ten a team can have available for a game.

The game will be made up at a date to be determined later, according to the news release.

This obviously sucks for multiple reasons. First and foremost, hopefully the illnesses to the players and coaches aren’t serious and they recover quickly. The last thing you’d want is for a player or coach to be out an extended period of time due to a serious bout with COVID.

It is also unfortunate this happened because this was a prime opportunity for Michigan to get back on track in a big way. MSU has been among the nation’s best teams this year and have only lost twice — to No. 1 Baylor and No. 6 Kansas. Had the Wolverines won like Vegas had somehow predicted them to, it could have kickstarted their season and given them a huge win when it comes time to tournament seeding. They still have a shot to do that, but today would have been a prime time to do it with the maize out crowd at home.

Michigan’s next game is tentatively set for 9 p.m. Tuesday at Crisler Center against Purdue.