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According to Brendan Quinn of The Athletic, Gonzaga and Michigan State will face off in a closed door scrimmage for the second straight year.
Michigan State will play a closed-door scrimmage against Gonzaga on Oct. 19 in Denver, per sources.
— Brendan Quinn (@BFQuinn) September 19, 2019
This will be the second straight year the two are meeting for a "secret scrimmage." They played last October in Minneapolis.
Last October, Gonzaga got the better of Michigan State in both halves of their scrimmage. Corey Kispert scored a game-high 24 points. Filip Petrusev added 11. Other returners Killian Tillie and Joel Ayayi did not play.
Michigan State is likely going to be the consensus number one team in the country when polls are released next month. They defeated Duke to reach the Final Four last season before falling to Texas Tech. They return National Player of the Year candidate Cassius Winston, along with Kyle Ahrens, Josh Langford, and Xavier Tillman amongst other rotation players. They also have a stud freshman named Rocket Watts, who is easily a Top-10 college basketball name this year.
Last year, it was a solid but still growing Michigan State team facing one of the best, most established teams in the country. This year, the roles are reversed. Gonzaga will be integrating a whopping eight new players into their system, while Michigan State returns basically everyone from a Final Four appearance. It would not be shocking to see the Bulldogs take a few lumps in this one, but it should be a fantastic gauge for where the team is just a couple weeks weeks before the regular season begins.