With Nationals only a week away, Michigan State is ready to win a title. With the schedule released, the roster finalized, and the strategy set, the Spartans are prepared to make this their best finish yet. The roster is filled with dodgeball veterans, with only three players making their first National Tournament appearance, and even they have played in multiple tournaments this season. The other seventeen players have plenty of experience, and this will be key if the Spartans go the whole way and play seven games in two days. With so much wear and tear on their arms, for the Spartans to be so deep will be very important if they hope to win the title. Sophomore Mike Van Ermen says “As someone who gets a pretty sore arm after a day on the court, we need to have our throwers who are susceptible to ‘dead arm’ to play smart on the first day. We shouldn’t be trying to break people’s blocks or taking risky shots. Instead, we need to pick our targets without blocks and team throw, possibly without gripping to avoid losing energy. We’re going to need all the arms we have if we want to go far in the tournament.”

Facing James Madison at 10:45 am, Michigan State will have to adapt to the Dukes’ game play. Having never played them before, MSU must impose their own style on JMU and force them to play Spartan Dodgeball. At 3:45 pm Michigan State goes against Wisconsin-Platteville. Having lost both matches of the season (against Western Illinois and Moody Bible) the Spartans must get out to an early lead and squash any hopes of an upset. Finally Michigan State squares off against Miami (OH) at 5:00 pm, and will have to similarly get out fast against them as well. The Saturday pool play for Michigan State is very winnable, and they should come out as a top four seed on Sunday. Van Ermen says “I feel our draw’s pretty favorable. In our teams history, we haven’t had too many problems with the teams we’re matched up with. However, we can’t just walk in assuming we’re going to win. We still need to play our game, and we still need to play smart. If we do that, we’ll walk into Sunday with a pretty favorable road to the Final Four.”