Michigan State Basketball is still an NCAA Tournament team, for now
Despite what some people have said, Michigan State basketball is still in line for the NCAA Tournament, but more home losses could change that statement.
It’s that point in the season when fans have started to doubt everything and believe their teams are headed for the NIT. This is a theme for many throughout the season and right now, it’s the theme for Michigan State basketball, losers of three straight.
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But while it’s easy to remember last season’s success, it was only two years ago that MSU was 13-7 and coming off a bad loss to Nebraska. Only a couple games later, the Spartans fell at home to a mediocre Illinois team and were 15-8. But things turned around and the team miraculously made a run to the Final Four, after finishing 21-10 in the regular season.
While that’s the high, there’s also the chance this year ends like 2011 did, in the first round of the NCAA tournament to seven-seeded UCLA. That team also lost three games in the middle of the Big Ten slate and finished 17-13 in the regular season. Unsurprisingly, the calculations at KenPom have MSU projected to finish at 17-14 this season, on the cusp of the tournament. Keep in mind, that’s before the Big Ten tourney.
I’m here to say that this is not the end — yet again. I said that after the Penn State loss and even after the Ohio State loss. The plan I laid out for 20 wins had Michigan State winning at Indiana and losing to Purdue.
Many have claimed that this team is NIT bound due to not beating the likes of Indiana or Purdue, but unfortunately for those people, they don’t study the rest of the competition. So while the Spartans didn’t get that ‘significant’ win against the Boilermakers, it’s not like their competition did either. There’s a reason Michigan State is still in the field by a decent margin at the Bracket Matrix.
So let’s look at a couple other bubble teams with better records and their respective flaws. An overtime home win against West Virginia doesn’t excuse Texas Tech for having a cream puff non-conference slate. VCU’s best wins have come against Princeton and Middle Tennessee. Even a home win over Dayton on Friday wouldn’t put them past the Spartans. But there’s also bunch of ACC teams that no one is really sure what the committee will do with and that’s where having 17 wins could be problematic for Michigan State.
Teams like Clemson, Pittsburgh, Wake Forest and NC State are all battling for the tournament, and while they have a lot of losses, can get huge wins almost every night playing in the ACC while never having a bad loss.
As for this weekend’s opponent, Michigan, it has home losses to Virginia Tech and Maryland, with its best wins coming out of conference against Marquette, SMU and Texas. The Wolverines are firmly on the bubble even with a slightly better record than MSU. They close the season with four road games in their last five contests. In truth, they need a win against Michigan State a little more than MSU needs one.
Michigan State has four decent wins at the moment (Wichita State, Northwestern, Minnesota x2) and no truly bad losses, no matter what people say about Northeastern. And right now, that’s enough. There are three key games for the Spartans that I’ll lay out, that will make or break the season: at Nebraska, at Michigan, at Illinois. I say this assuming they will win the rest of their home games (with Wisconsin being a toss-up). If the Spartans can win at least two of those road games, they’ll be looking at 18 wins. And if they lose all of them, well, they should’ve never expected to go to the tournament with only one true road win (Minnesota).
While Michigan State is on a three-game losing streak, there are 10 games remaining and losing to the matchup nightmare of Purdue shouldn’t have swayed anyone’s projections. And if MSU loses to Michigan this weekend, then I have no choice but to stop writing these articles until this team gets a win.
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