How Michigan State basketball can make the 2021 NCAA Tournament

Path to the tournament, Pt. 2

Another recent team that you’ll find in a similar situation as MSU this year is the Ohio State 2017-18 squad. To start the season, this team won 13 of their first 14 games and looked like a Big Ten title contender. But this came crashing down after they played Michigan State and a handful of other ranked teams.

The Buckeyes would eventually stumble to a 20-15 record with only eight conference wins and 12 losses. They also did this with only a single win all season against a ranked team, and that team was a 22nd-ranked Iowa. Regardless, they’d go on to earn an 11-seed and actually get a win in the first round of the tournament.

With the 8-12 record that they had, this will likely be the closest comparison that we’ll find in recent memory to this year’s Michigan State basketball team. Let’s say, for the sake of being positive, MSU finishes the regular season 3-4, getting wins against Indiana and Maryland and picking off one of the four ranked teams that they will face. This would give them another solid win and a conference record comparable to that Ohio State team from a couple of years back.

If MSU was able to make a decent run in the Big Ten tournament after this, I think they’d have the resume to sneak into the tournament. That being said, we have no idea how this team will perform. Even in the recent wins, we haven’t been given much reason to believe that we can squeeze out a 3-4 finish to the year and make a tournament run.

Time will tell, but this team isn’t as far removed from the NCAA Tournament as most fans believe. The Spartans just have to win games that they should win and snag an upset from a ranked team and they might just have a shot.