Somehow there are just two weeks remaining in the 2024 college football regular season. While Michigan’s season has been over for all intents and purposes for several weeks now, there’s still the matter of bowl eligibility to play for. A win over Northwestern on Saturday or against Ohio State will take the Wolverines to a bowl.

There’s been no consensus yet on where Michigan will land, but downstream ripples will be felt following the results of this weekend’s games. Specifically, most projections have four Big Ten teams in the playoff field, thought it will be fascinating to see how many are included once Ohio State and Indiana square off. If Indiana gets hosed by the committee, Michigan would be bumped down a peg because of it.

As a general reminder, here are the seven Big Ten bowl tie-ins:

• Cheez-It Citrus Bowl (vs. SEC)
• ReliaQuest Bowl (vs. SEC)
• Duke’s Mayo Bowl (vs. ACC)
• Music City Bowl (vs. SEC)
• Pinstripe Bowl (vs. ACC)
• Guaranteed Rate Bowl (vs. Big 12)
• Quick Lane Bowl (vs. MAC)

Also keep in mind that the four newest teams to the Big Ten are still eligible to play in the former Pac-12 tie-ins until a restructuring occurs. Nearly all projections nationally do have that scenario taking place.

Here’s where several outlets have the Wolverines headed.

CBS Sports (Jerry Palm): Music City Bowl vs. Missouri

Palm’s projection remained identical to last week with the Wolverines traveling to Nashville to take on Mizzou. Like most others, he has four Big Ten teams currently in the CFP field. Interestingly, Palm has Boise State receiving the No. 4 seed and getting a first-round bye as he has them ranked higher than his projected Big XII champion Colorado.

The Sporting News (Bill Bender): Las Vegas Bowl vs. Colorado

Bender goes off the board this week by having Michigan travel to Nevada for a bowl game that the Big Ten has no ties to. While this has happened occasionally historically, it would certainly come as a surprise. Even more surprisingly, Bender has two non-Big Ten schools in the Music City Bowl as he projects Duke and LSU to head to Nashville. If this were to happen, Michigan would take on an extremely disappointed Colorado team, as Bender has them missing the playoffs to projected Big 12 champion BYU.

Athlon Sports (Steven Lassan): Pinstripe Bowl vs. Duke

Similar to Palm at CBS Sports, Lassan didn’t change his projection for Michigan one bit from last week to this week. He again has the Wolverines facing off with Duke in Yankee Stadium. Also similar to last week, Athlon has Nebraska jumping over Michigan to receive the bid to the Music City Bowl. I would expect this to be shaken up next week, however, should Indiana fall to Ohio State as Lassan has the Hoosiers as the No. 11 seed and hanging on for dear life despite being undefeated.

247Sports (Brad Crawford): Pinstripe Bowl vs. Pitt

Crawford has Michigan falling down a rung on the bowl ladder this week by having the Wolverines headed to the Pinstripe Bowl to face Pitt. Last week, Crawford had Michigan in the Music City Bowl. The common theme amongst bowl projections is to have Ohio State, Oregon, Penn State, and Indiana in the CFP while Illinois, Minnesota, and Iowa are spread among the Citrus, ReliaQuest, and Mayo Bowl in some fashion. Michigan and Nebraska have typically been fighting for the Music City Bowl. Where 247 differs is they have Nebraska all the way up in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl, relegating Minnesota to the Music City Bowl and Michigan to the Pinstripe Bowl.

The Action Network (Brett McMurphy): Duke’s Mayo Bowl vs. Duke

McMurphy paints the rosiest picture for Michigan to date as he has the Wolverines headed to Charlotte, North Carolina to take on Duke in a quasi-road game on January 3rd. Of the five projections we dug into, he’s the only one to have Michigan placed above Minnesota in the Big Ten pecking order. Interestingly, he also doesn’t have Nebraska reaching bowl eligibility. The Cornhuskers are currently 5-5 with Wisconsin and Iowa left on the schedule.

EAST LANSING – Michigan State survived another tough test at home but not without an injury concern moving forward.

Freshman guard Jase Richardson injured his left ankle with a little more than a minute to play in Tuesday’s 83-75 win against Samford.

“It was a significant, it looked like, sprain but he was happy in the locker room so I think he’s going to be OK,” coach Tom Izzo said after the game. “I just don’t know how long he’ll be out but he’s going to miss a few days, there’s no question about that.”

With the Spartans (4-1) leading by 11, Richardson appeared to roll his ankle while defending Josh Holloway on a missed layup down the late. He remained on the floor in pain under the basket as the Bulldogs (4-2) took advantage and hit a 3-pointer before officials finally noticed the injury and stopped play amid complaints from fans. Richardson walked off the floor with help and made it to the bench while being looked at by trainer Nick Richey.

Richardson was receiving treatment during the time reporters spoke with players in the locker room after the game.

“I’m not a doctor but it seems to be a sprain. … I’m sure they’ll X-Ray it and MRI it, they’ll go through it,” Izzo said. “I told him he could take a day off but not two and he said that’s fine with him.”

Richardson, the son of former standout Spartan and NBA star Jason Richardson, has been impressive early this season. The former four-star recruit has scored in double figures three of the first five games and tied his season high with 12 points on Tuesday. He also chipped in three rebounds, three assists, four steals and a block in 25 minutes.

“I thought Jase Richardson was phenomenal,” Izzo said. “He just looked comfortable to me. It’s going to take me a little time to understand him, it’s going to take him a little time to understand things but he’s very smooth and doesn’t panic and did a hell of a job.”

Through the first two weeks of the season, Richardson is fourth on the team in scoring at 8.4 points per game while shooting 62.5 percent (15-for-24) from the floor and making all nine free throws. He also has only one turnover with 11 assists while looking a lot more advanced than an average freshman.

“The moment’s never too big for him,” Izzo said.

Richardson has already carved out a big role for the Spartans, whose next test will come in the Maui Invitational. They open the three-game tournament against Colorado (4-0) on Monday and will face either two-time defending champion and No. 2 UConn or Memphis in the second game. The other half of the bracket includes No. 3 Auburn, No. 5 Iowa State and No. 10 North Carolina. Richardson’s availability will likely be a major factor in Michigan State’s success on the trip.

“He said it kind of wasn’t as bad after that little bit of time went by,” senior guard Jaden Akins recalled Richardson saying about the injury, “so hopefully he’ll be good because we need him.”

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Michigan State quarterback Aidan Chiles had a solid outing against Illinois, throwing for 256 yards and two touchdowns and, for the first time this season, didn’t commit a turnover.

Chiles has shown signs of improvement but still isn’t quite where the Spartans need him to be. And that goes for the whole offense as a whole. Chiles and the entire unit have the potential to be great.

With two games remaining, they want to show they are capable of it.

Chiles addressed the media on Tuesday, discussing the season so far, the loss to Illinois and this final stretch of the year.

You can watch below:

Below is a transcript from Michigan State coach Jonathan Smith’s opening statement of his press conference on Monday:

“OK, quick turnaround. but going back on Saturday after fully digesting the tape, lack of complementary football, really all three phases, there wasn’t enough there. There were some really good things in all three phases, but not enough to make it a lot closer in the fourth quarter and ultimately, win the game. And again, credit to Illinois. I thought they did a nice job a couple of facets schematically, tweaked a couple times in protection that we couldn’t get home, especially on third down, that they blocked up real well. And their quarterback made some good throws when there was needed, especially on some of those third-and-longers. Offensively, up front, we need to establish some things better. Protection wasn’t as good as even I thought. It wasn’t great on the field looking at it again, there’s a lot of edges there. Aidan [Chiles] did a nice job getting ball out a few times. We can protect the guy better, and we’re going to need to. Special teams-wise, we had to execute in the punt — you look at the yardage, when we were punting the ball, net, how much, I mean, we’ve lost that side of things, their punt return, our punt. Again, going off of the previous week, we were at protection issues, now we had a little more hang time and eliminate some of those hidden yards on special teams. So, like I said, quick turnaround moving forward. Practiced this morning. Guys are back to work. There’s definitely some disappointment, frustration, but I thought, looking at the work, they’re putting that effort and the energy, emotion into the practice today. Because that is a quick turnaround, and it felt like guys were moving around full speed. So, liked the work we got done today. Because looking at Purdue, you watch this tape, they’ve been able to move the ball. They’ve had some lighter scoring, just because some of the red zone [struggles], similar to us. You look at their schedule and the opponents, they played. A bunch of top five teams, and that’s what this league is and all of that. So, we’ll know we’ll have a challenge Friday night.”

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