It seems like they can’t help it. Over the past few years, the week before the Michigan game, Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio or his players try their best to give the Wolverines posterboard material.

This week, it was Spartan senior defensive end Trevor Anderson who provided the entertainment.

“Coach (Dantonio) told us that if you haven't played Michigan, within 30 seconds, you'll realize why we don't like them. After about 15 seconds, I realized why I don’t like them,” Anderson said at the Spartans’ weekly press conference in East Lansing. “I mean, just the total lack of respect they have for our school in general, not just our program, but in general, the lack of respect they have for us.

"As an athlete, you go out there — we’re always taught as Spartans, you know, to respect our opponent, and just the lack of respect they have, period, is sickening.”

But the 4-0 Wolverines haven't bothered to publicly respond to Anderson's comments. After all, as Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez maintained at his press conference yesterday, the team is too busy concentrating on its own play to worry about what the 1-3 Spartans are saying off the field.

For their part, redshirt junior linebacker Obi Ezeh and junior cornerback Donovan Warren have remained focused this week on improving this year's young defense before facing Michigan State. Both players made immediate impacts on defense after they arrived in Ann Arbor. Warren, coming in as a five-star recruit in 2007, was a Freshman All-American. And Ezeh, despite the Wolverines’ 3-9 record last year, managed to garner All-Big Ten honorable mention as a redshirt sophomore.

Now, as two veterans on a team that consists of almost 70 percent freshmen and sophomores, they are partly responsible for conveying the importance of the Michigan/Michigan State rivalry to their underclassmen teammates.

Of the two, Warren had the most to learn about the rivalry's history. The Long Beach, Calif., native, who grew up watching UCLA/Southern Cal battles, said his main exposure to Michigan/Michigan State games before coming to Ann Arbor was when he would wake up to watch the games on television at 9 a.m. on the West Coast. Back then, he had no particular rooting interest in mind.

But Ezeh, from Grand Rapids, said his hometown is split almost evenly between Michigan and Michigan State fans. Despite his football allegiance, he estimates about five of his close neighbors fly Spartan flags in front of their houses.

“When I get back from a two-hour drive back, that’s the first thing I see, right by my house, is a Michigan State flag flying proudly, obviously, because they won last year,” Ezeh said. “Middle of the night, (I should) go and take them down or something."

Growing up surrounded by both sides of the rivalry meant Ezeh wasn’t particularly conscious of what he wore to a Michigan football camp when he was about 16 years old. After afternoon drills and 7-on-7 play in the evening, Ezeh met former Michigan coach Lloyd Carr for the first time.

They shook hands, and Ezeh noticed Carr staring at his shirt. Ezeh glanced down to see what his future coach was looking at — and that’s when the high schooler remembered he was wearing a cutoff Michigan State Engineering shirt turned inside out.

“If you could see his eyes, there was a lot being spoken non-verbally,” Ezeh recalled almost five years later.

Warren's most vivid Michigan State off-the-field memory was in the airport last January, en route to his California home, after he had already played the Spartans twice in college.

“I had nothing Michigan on, but a guy just came up to me and said, ‘We’re gonna beat your ass this year, again,’ ” Warren recalled. “I said, ‘What?’ He was like, ‘Yeah, those Wolverines, we’re going to give it to you this year again.’ I said, ‘All right, all right, sir.’ ”

The cornerback said even though the mystery man wasn’t wearing Michigan State attire, it was clear he wasn’t from Ohio State or Notre Dame. After all, he said, with comments like those in a Michigan airport, the man was bound to be someone who liked the Spartans.

The Wolverine defense is probably right to resist responding to the Spartan trash talk as it prepares for Saturday's game. Warren and the secondary will be up against the best passing attack in the Big Ten, with the Spartans averaging 320.8 yards in the air.