The tipoff times for this season's Michigan-Michigan State men's basketball games were released on Thursday -- sort of.Below are the entire 2019-20 schedules for Michigan and Michigan State, including tipoff times and TV channels (all times ET).The Big Ten announced that Michigan's home game against the Spartans on Feb. 8 will start at noon and will be televised by FOX.The first meeting, on Jan. 5 in East Lansing, will start at either 1:30 p.m. or 4:30 p.m. and air on CBS. A final decision will be made at a later date.Michigan, unlike in recent years, does not have a single home game that will start past 7:00 p.m.ANN ARBOR -- Michigan defensive line coach Shaun Nua was asked Wednesday what the team’s game plan was to stop Army’s triple-option offense on Saturday."Don't let them run the ball," he said.
Nua smiled when answering, but how the Wolverines will try and contain the Black Knights' run game is a little more complicated.In layman's terms, Army will try and attack in three different ways when running the ball: the quarterback can either keep the ball and run it himself, "the keep," hand it off to one of the running backs in the backfield, "the dive," or roll out to either side before deciding to run the ball himself or pitching it to one of his running backs, "the pitch."There also is a fourth option that the Black Knights rarely use: throwing the ball. In their 14-7 season-opening victory over Rice, they ran the ball 56 of their 64 plays on offense.
"You have to be disciplined on your keys," Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh said Monday night on the “Inside Michigan Football” radio show. You have to be disciplined with whose got the dive, whose got the quarterback and whose got the pitch. There is a lot of discipline to play in that sort of defense. We are going to have to be at our best."The triple option is rare in college football these days, with mainly just the service academies still using it. But Army is one of the most effective. It averaged 32 .77 points last season, when it finished 11-2."They want three yards," Nua said. "Three yards is a win to them. First down is a huge win to them. There is no secret in it. They know it, we know it, we just have to get them off the field as fast as we can."