Michigan State Basketball not an NCAA Tournament ‘lock’ just yet

Michigan State basketball is in a good position to make the NCAA Tournament for now, but with two more losses, the Spartans will be in a precarious position on the bubble.

It remains a mystery as to what lineup Tom Izzo will trot out in the final few minutes of every game, so let’s focus on the facts instead. Michigan State is 18-12 overall and 10-7 in the Big Ten. Ahead of Wednesday’s games, the Spartans were a nine-seed on average at Bracket Matrix. With this loss, they probably won’t move all that much, but will more than likely fall to the 10-seed line behind the likes of Wichita State and Northwestern.

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For now, there’s no reason to worry as teams all around them lost including Michigan, Xavier, VCU and Arkansas. But lose Saturday’s game at Maryland and there should be a slight reason to worry as teams like Seton Hall, Marquette, Providence, Wake Forest, Cal and Kansas State are all creeping. Those teams aren’t there yet, but they are close.

But while I’ve said consistently throughout the season that this team was in a good position to make the NCAA tournament, someone needs to play devil’s advocate because apparently Izzo thinks his team is guaranteed a spot. Either that, or he just likes watching Kenny Goins play basketball instead of Nick Ward. At the least there are a number of beat writers that believe MSU is a lock for the field even if it lost every game the rest of the way.

If people really think that’s the case, let’s see how this plays out. With a loss at Maryland, the Spartans will draw any one of these five teams in their first game of the Big Ten Tournament: Indiana, Nebraska, Ohio State, Penn State, Rutgers. To be clear, they’ve lost to three of them already, so it’s not far-fetched. These losses would put MSU at 18-14 overall, still with 10 wins in the Big Ten.

Logically, their rankings would all fall about 10-15 spots with the minimums being KenPom 60, BPI 60 and RPI 50. Those rankings scream bubble material. But as said by that beat writer above, the assumption is that six RPI top 50 wins should be an automatic qualifier. Dive into those numbers and you’ll see that three of those wins aren’t in the top 41 and the only one that’s in the top 30 is Minnesota. In addition, for the season, Michigan State only has two true road wins and two neutral-court wins.

The problem this season is that there’s going to be more teams with top 50 RPI wins than normal. The ACC might be the best conference ever. The Big Ten, SEC and Big East are all slightly deeper than previous seasons, which means every team beats up on each other. Don’t believe me? Let’s go through a list and keep in mind all of these teams still have multiple chances left to get more top 50 RPI wins.

Marquette (7), Syracuse (6), Illinois (5), Providence (5), Clemson (5), Vanderbilt (4) and Ohio State (4).

The next best win for Michigan State is No. 62 Ohio State, but after that it’s No. 85 Nebraska. If we made a list for top 80 RPI wins, the Spartans would most definitely not be near the top, they would be mixed in with a bevy of bubble teams.

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So if you think Michigan State is a no-doubt for an NCAA tournament bid if it loses out, you may want to take another look. The Spartans have an even tougher road game at Maryland on Saturday and then who knows how they’ll play in the Big Ten Tournament. If Izzo’s answer is playing Goins in crunch-time minutes, we may have to watch them compete in other tournaments not called March Madness.