Michigan State women's basketball earned its second-straight NCAA Tournament bid Sunday night under head coach Robyn Fralick as the Spartans earned the No. 7 seed in the Spokane region. The Spartans will face No. 10 Harvard in Raleigh, North Carolina on Saturday.
Tip is set for 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time with the game set to broadcast on ESPNews.
MSU has made the tournament both seasons under Fralick who holds a 43-18 record in East Lansing overall (23-13 in Big Ten play) but the program has failed to advance out of the first weekend in every appearance since 2009 in former head coach Suzy Merchant's second season.
The Spartans will make their 20th appearance in the NCAA Tournament overall on Saturday and enter it looking for the team's first win in the opening round since 2019.
Standing in their way will be Harvard who enters the tournament having finished No. 3 in the Ivy League but clinched a bid thanks to winning its first ever Ivy League Conference Tournament Championship. The Crimson downed Columbia 74-71 in the title game to clinch the program's first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2007 and just the seventh overall.
Harvard enters the matchup 24-4 overall and 11-3 in league play. The Crimson faced three common opponents of the Spartans this season. Harvard faced then No. 25 Indiana on Nov. 7, downing the Hoosiers72-68 in overtime, and Northwestern in Evanston on Nov. 23, defeating the Wildcats 75-50. In Ivy League play, the Crimson beat Yale in both meetings, 61-43 in New Haven and 91-35 in Cambridge.
MSU's athletics website indicates this will be the first meeting between the Spartans and the Crimson in program history.
Should MSU advance, waiting for it will be the winner of No. 2 North Carolina State versus No. 15 Vermont. Fellow Big Ten foe UCLA earned the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament on this corner of the bracket.
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