While the men’s basketball team took center stage last week as its season tipped off with Colgate and No. 14 Arkansas, Michigan State women’s basketball also got its start, beating both opponents rather quietly.
Robyn Fralick’s squad began the season ranked No. 23, and that was a big development for the program which had fallen on hard times under Suzy Merchant. Fralick is proving that she was the right hire to be the program’s next head coach because she already has the Spartans in the preseason AP Top 25 — something that seemingly hadn’t happened in what felt like an eternity under Merchant.
Michigan State had a successful 2024-25 season under Fralick, but the expectations are rising, and the Spartans cracked the Top 25 to start the season.
All the Spartans did was live up to that early national respect, beating Mercyhurst by 86 points, 125-39. It was one of the biggest blowouts of the opening week of women’s basketball, and the Spartans followed that up with a 32-point win over Eastern Michigan to improve to 2-0.
With an average win margin of 59 points through two games and with the No. 20 team in the country suffering a loss in the opening week, it felt like the Spartans were due for a jump.
AP voters apparently felt differently, dropping the Spartans one spot as Kentucky jumped them. Their average win margin of 59 points through one week apparently wasn’t impressive enough to even hold on to that No. 23 spot in the rankings. That’s right, the AP voters decided to drop Michigan State to No. 24 and one slip-up will have the Spartans on the outside looking in.
So the men’s team beat No. 14 Arkansas and the national media said it was because the Razorbacks haven’t built chemistry yet (neither has MSU) and the women’s team wins two games by 118 points and gets dropped in the rankings. Disrespect is contagious in East Lansing.