Horned Frogs headed for Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl

TCU will play Michigan State in the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl on Dec. 29, the team announced Sunday.

The Horned Frogs (7-5) and Spartans (6-6) will square off at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Ariz. Kickoff is scheduled for 9:15 p.m.

For TCU, it'll be its eighth straight bowl appearance and 14th in the last 15 years. The two schools will be playing for the first time since 1953, when Michigan State won 26-19.

TCU coach Gary Patterson met briefly with the media Sunday evening via teleconference. He said he's already had a chance to go over some game tape of the Spartans.

Here are some more highlights from Patterson's bowl presser:

On heading back to the Phoenix area, where the Frogs played Boise State in the 2010 Fiesta Bowl: "Getting back to that area is something we wanted to do again. Very excited about it, and looking forward to that opportunity."

On facing a defensive-oriented team like Michigan State: "We play in a conference where there's a few more points scored...When you go into a bowl game, I've always said you got to be careful of what you wish for and you talk about, because it usually changes when you give two teams a month to prepare for a ballgame. They said when I played in the Rose Bowl that it was going to end up a scoring fest, and it ended up 21-19. For us, we want to find a way to win a ballgame...That'll be our challenge to try and produce points against a defense that hasn't given up that many points this season. We have quite a challenge on our hands."

On the similarities in facing a run-heavy Wisconsin team in the 2011 Rose Bowl and facing a Michigan State team led by feature back Le'Veon Bell: "Bell has run for almost 1,600 yards so he's very good. Probaby the difference is he carries the ball most of the time. You had to play three tailbacks of Wisconsin who were all a bit different."

On Michigan State's size: "We have our hands full. They're one of the bigger teams we've played this year...We don't see as much of the big groupings in the Big 12. One of the things, we have LSU starting off the season next year so it'll be a good 1-2 punch."

On Trevone Boykin continuing to develop after stepping in the fifth game of the season: "I think this month of December, getting a chance to step back and get 13 or 14 practices under his belt, it's going to help him quite a bit to do that. Obviously, he got us back to a bowl game, and that was a concern from the beginning any time you make that kind of change."