No. 1 Michigan State Faces No. 2 Kentucky Tuesday in Champions Classic

East Lansing, Mich. – The No. 1-ranked Michigan State men's basketball team opens the 2019-20 regular season on Tuesday, Nov. 5 when it plays No. 2 Kentucky in the State Farm Champions Classic at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

The game will air live on ESPN, with Dan Shulman, Dick Vitale and Holly Rowe calling all of the action. The Spartan Sports Network radio call can be heard on one of 38 affiliates and on the web at SpartanSportsNetwork.com, with Will Tieman handling the play-by-play and Matt Steigenga serving as the color analyst. The game can also be heard on Sirius, XM and Internet 83.

Quotable
"You know, I'm excited about the Champions Classic, I mean, there's no question that there's some injuries that made it a little more difficult in some ways," Head Coach Tom Izzo said. "But at the same time, what a great way to start the season- for us, for our players, for our University, program, everything.

"To compete in this event as I said is great for all of us. When you look at the top four teams in the AP Poll, I think it's happened one time according to my stat guys, back in 2008 they had four teams in there and that was the Final Four. The Champions Classic had the top four teams in the Coaches Poll in '17. So, it's not something that happens very often. Whether anybody is deserving of being there or not, I talked to Cal and he's questioning how the fact that he's young. I told him he's the oldest team I've seen Kentucky have in 10 years. They start supposedly maybe two freshmen, a fifth-year senior and two second-year seniors because if you are at Kentucky more than a year you are classified as a senior not a sophomore."

MSU No. 1 in Preseason Polls
Michigan State's men's basketball team will enter the 2019-20 season ranked as the No. 1 team in the country in the preseason poll released by the Associated Press on October 21 ... This is the first time in program history that MSU has opened the season as the preseason No. 1 team in the country in the AP poll ... MSU received 60 of 65 first-place votes and 1,619 points to land the No. 1 ranking in the preseason ... Kentucky, with two first-place votes, was ranked No. 2, while Kansas, with three first-place votes, is No. 3. Duke and Louisville round out the top-five teams, respectively.
Series History

Kentucky leads the head-to-head series, 13-11.
The teams have split the last four meetings, but the Spartans have won four of the last six overall and five of the last eight games.
Michigan State is 1-1 against Kentucky in the Champions Classic.

The Last Meeting

In the last meeting between the teams, then-No. 2 Kentucky posted a 69-48 win over then-No. 13 Michigan State.
Kentucky led 34-26 at halftime and the Wildcats opened the big lead with a 16-7 run that made it 51-37 with 12:04 to play.
Cassius Winston and Kenny Goins led MSU with nine points apiece.

Champions Classic

Michigan State is 3-5 all-time in the Champions Classic.
MSU lost to preseason No. 1 Kansas, 92-87, in last year's event.
Kentucky has a 4-4 record in the Champions Classic, Duke is 5-3 and Kansas is 4-4.

Winston Earns National Accolades

Michigan State senior guard Cassius Winston has earned a slew of preseason awards entering the 2019-20 season.
Winston was selected as a Preseason First Team All-American by the Associated Press and was also tabbed a Preseason First Team All-American by the Sporting News.
He was also named the Big Ten Preseason Player of the Year, was one of three unanimous selections to the All-Big Ten Team and was selected to the watch list for the Bob Cousy Point Guard of the Year Award.