If there’s a unique place to play a basketball game, Michigan State will probably find a way to play there eventually. The Spartans opened the 2011-12 season by playing North Carolina on the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson in the inaugural Carrier Classic. Now, Tom Izzo’s squad will be opening up the 2012-13 season somewhere even stranger — in an airplane hangar at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. MSU will take on Connecticut in the inaugural Armed Forces Classic, the first regular season college basketball game to ever be played in Europe.

Last Year’s Inaugural Carrier Classic Set the Stage for Michigan State’s Entry Into This Year’s Armed Forces Classic

Games in strange settings are a clear trend in college basketball, with the Carrier Classic moving into its second year, Pittsburgh playing its Midnight Madness scrimmage on a street corner and now the Spartans and Huskies flying all the way to Europe to tip off the season. Michigan State has been a pioneer in the movement, as evidenced by the Spartans’ openers last season and next. Athletic director Mark Hollis has been a visionary in helping his team gain exposure on the national stage by scheduling games that draw in a national television audience. The media-savvy Hollis and his athletic department have grown the Spartans’ national presence across all sports, but basketball in particular. With most teams choosing to play cupcakes during the first few weeks of the season, last year Michigan State immediately threw itself into the national spotlight against a loaded North Carolina team in the Carrier Classic, both due to the magnitude of the match-up and the uniqueness of the event. It was big for the sport as a whole too, as college basketball stole the spotlight, if only for a day, in the heart of the football season.

Michigan State’s scheduling is indicative of what makes it an elite program. While many top schools schedule easy early games to ensure early wins, the Spartans aren’t afraid to schedule the big boys. After the North Carolina game last year, MSU then moved on to New York to play Duke in the Champions Classic. This year, following the UConn game in Germany, the Spartans will face Kansas in the second edition of the Champions Classic in Atlanta. That’s already a daunting early-season schedule, but it’s a smart one. MSU started off 0-2 last year, but it didn’t matter in the long run as it helped Tom Izzo’s young team gain good early experience. Even though MSU started in a two-game hole, the Spartans rallied for 15 straight wins followed by a Big Ten Championship and a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Not only did Hollins’ aggressive scheduling fail to hurt the team’s future, it undoubtedly helped in recruiting and exposure, something an opening game against North Dakota State (we’re looking at you, Indiana) can’t do. As long as Michigan State continues to schedule top-flight competition early in the season and find new, forward-thinking ways to gain prime exposure, the Spartans will reap the benefits in recruiting and national attention and keep building their legacy as part of college basketball’s elite. The Armed Forces Classic is the latest innovative action taken by Hollis to improve the Spartans’ brand in that regard.

Kevin Trahan is a Big Ten microsite writer.

KTrahan (60 Posts)

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 20th, 2012 at 8:07 am by KTrahan and is filed under big ten, microsites. Tagged: armed forces classic, carrier classic, connecticut, michigan st, tom izzo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.