EAST LANSING — Michigan State coach Tom Izzo was discussing the possibility of the Spartans finishing in a tie for the Big Ten Conference regular-season title should Michigan defeat Indiana in Ann Arbor on Sunday and MSU defeat Northwestern when he caught himself.

"Maybe some years you deserve to sneak in the back door, and we've done it I think once, and that was a long time ago,'' Izzo said following Friday practice at Breslin Center.

"(But) we wouldn't be sneaking in because of the schedule; we've earned the right to be in this position, and one or two games makes a huge difference when you're playing for a championship.

"When I say sneaking, it's a poor choice of words…but we'd need help (Sunday) to do it.''

As for the difference in the conference schedule the teams have played, that has to do with the Big Ten and the games it assigned.

The Big Ten teams don't play a 22-game league schedule -- they play 18 -- so some teams have the advantage/disadvantage of playing certain schools twice and others only once.

Michigan State has played the most difficult Big Ten schedule of the teams still in contention for the conference title.

The Spartans (23-7, 12-5) played the top five teams (other than themselves) in the conference standings twice: Indiana, Michigan, Ohio State, Wisconsin and Minnesota -- along with Nebraska and Purdue.

Michigan State's single games were: at 12th-place Penn State, at Iowa (tied for 6th), home against Illinois (tied for 6th), and it closes with 11th place Northwestern on Sunday at Breslin Center.

Michigan, by comparison, had single games with 5th-place Wisconsin (losing on the road), and Minnesota, along with home games against Iowa and Nebraska.

The Wolverines Big Ten schedule was the easiest, in terms of the number of games UM played against the three worst RPI teams in the league (6) compared to Michigan State and Ohio State, which only had four games against those same teams (Penn State, Northwestern, Purdue).

Ohio State also only had a single game with Minnesota, home, at that, while its other single games were Purdue, Iowa and Penn State

Indiana avoided having to travel to play at Wisconsin, and also played Illinois once as well as Northwestern and Nebraska one time.

Michigan State, Ohio State, Indiana and Michigan all played one another twice.

"I feel good, and my team does, too,'' said Izzo, whose team has played six of its past eight games against ranked Big Ten opponents including the past four straight. "They feel good and know we've given this a heluuva run, we've had an incredible schedule and played the best teams, and we're still in the hunt.''

Here's a chart showing how many times each team played the rest of the Big 10 (with teams' respective RPIs in parenthesis):

MN(20) IL(35) WI(41) IA(76) NE(98) PU(120) NW(157) PSU(176)

IU 2x 1x 1x 2x 1x 2x 1x 2x

MSU 2x 1x 2x 1x 2x 2x 1x 1x

UM 1x 2x 1x 1x 1x 2x 2x 2x

OSU 1x 2x 2x 1x 2x 1x 2x 1x