Michigan State Basketball: Why the 2020-21 squad feels hopeless

Failure of the offseason gameplan

If you’re looking for a reason outside of bad recruiting for the downfall of this team, there’s only one direction to look. That direction is west, where Tom Izzo’s office is located in East Lansing.

For the most part, even bad Izzo squads have given us some sliver of hope. In fact, his bad early-season squads have been some of the best when it really matters. But what if Izzo created a gameplan so poor that it was completely unrepairable?

This idea started in my head when news broke that Rocket Watts had asked Izzo if he could be moved out of the point guard position. It wasn’t really a surprise, but it did birth quite a few questions in my head. Most importantly, I asked myself, “What happens to the entire gameplan that they’ve been working on all offseason?”

Sure, AJ Hoggard looks like a promising young guard, but he doesn’t have developed chemistry with his team. Rocket, on the other hand, has had an entire season to create bonds with these players. They understand his play style and know where he’s going to go with the ball. Rocket at the point has been the entire focus of this team since the cancelation of last year’s tournament and we expected him to lead this team to the end.

It really didn’t come as a surprise to me that this MSU squad had played worse than I’ve ever seen an Izzo squad play when they totally ditched their gameplan and started Hoggard. That’s where the root cause of the Spartans’ bad performances lies — the original gameplan didn’t work and the backup plan was even worse. In all likelihood, this team will improve, but we may be pushing for an NIT championship instead of a NCAA Tournament championship this year.