Thankfully, Michigan State basketball season is right around the corner.
Who thought we’d be saying this about 1.5 months into football season? It definitely feels like the John L. Smith days when football would get overlooked for Tom basketball program, and we can thank Jonathan Smith’s 38-13 loss to UCLA on homecoming for that.
All the attention in East Lansing has turned toward basketball, and rightfully so.
The Spartans are gearing up to defend their Big Ten title and win back-to-back for the first time since before COVID-19. It’s possible, although it feels like everyone is picking either Purdue or Michigan to win the conference title. That’s right where Izzo wants to be: overlooked.
If he was hoping to be unranked in the first AP Top 25 of the season, however, he was probably slightly let down on Monday when the preseason poll was released.
Michigan State comes in at No. 22 in the first AP Top 25 of the season.
Here’s how the entire preseason poll looks, according to AP News (first-place votes in parentheses).
- Purdue (35)
- Houston (16)
- Florida (8)
- UConn (2)
- St. John’s
- Duke
- Michigan
- BYU
- Kentucky
- Texas Tech
- Louisville
- UCLA
- Arizona
- Arkansas
- Alabama
- Iowa State
- Illinois
- Tennessee
- Kansas
- Auburn
- Gonzaga
- Michigan State
- Creighton
- Wisconsin
- North Carolina
Other Big Ten teams receiving votes were Oregon, Ohio State, USC, Washington, Iowa, and Indiana.
Michigan State will play four top-15 teams in non-conference play.
According to the AP Top 25, Michigan State is the fifth-best team in the Big Ten which is right about where it was picked in the Big Ten preseason poll last week.
This feels about right for what the Spartans lost during the offseason and the uncertainties on the current roster pertaining to go-to scorers. Still, this team is talented enough to win the Big Ten (again) and go on a deep run in March. We’ll see soon enough.