The fanbase has been pretty rough on Michigan State basketball after a couple of exhibition losses to UConn and Marquette but they’re always going to be the Spartans’ harshest critics.
That’s never been proven to be true more than this week as members of the national media still praised Michigan State and pointed to the Spartans’ potential. The losses to UConn and Marquette seemed a lot worse in the moment than they actually were. Michigan State did play poorly but neither of those teams is going to be a slouch this year.
Marquette is going to be vastly improved from a year ago and UConn is going to be UConn as long as Dan Hurley is there.
Obviously no one found the two losses to be encouraging, by any means, but the national media has given Tom Izzo the benefit of the doubt. The Athletic’s college basketball writers picked their Final Four favorites and national champion and Michigan State was the most popular pick to make the national semifinal with eight votes (tied with UConn, of course). Two of them picked the Spartans to win the national title. Izzo and Hurley just made each other 10 times better by exposing some early flaws and the media sees it leading to a potential Final Four rematch.
They watched the Spartans lose a couple of games without leading for more than a couple of minutes and fully expected Izzo to use it as a learning opportunity. They just expect Izzo to figure it out.
Michigan State has way too much talent to continue that type of play so it’s good that they got it out of the system before the season officially starts.
It’s never quite as bad as it seems.
Michigan State is still far from a finished product
Izzo alluded to certain players not living up to their potential early on and needing to work on communication which means that they’re not where they need to be. Rarely is Michigan State ever a finished product to start the season and that’s what makes Izzo a great coach for his ability to mold and shape teams throughout a season.
Not many coaches get the most out of their teams quite like Izzo can and that’s going to happen this year, too. The Spartans are a little sloppy and disjointed early on, but they faced two tournament teams and one that’ll be a title favorite and saw how they measured up.
Now they can work on fixing this.
Losing those games but getting all that good film and experience against UConn and Marquette is going to go a long way when it comes to one-and-done time. It’s going to help right away, too, and we’ll see that against Duke, Arkansas, Gonzaga, and Tennessee.
If that’s the worst version of Michigan State we see this year, the Spartans are going to be pretty good. Fingers crossed.
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