Michigan State basketball included in CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 rankings

Next season might have the most question marks surrounding the Michigan State basketball team since the season after Cassius Winston graduated. Michigan State is losing four of its five starters from a team last season that already wasn’t very good, so your guess is as good as mine regarding how next season will go.

Michigan State also has only brought in one transfer this offseason in Frankie Fidler. So with all the new faces seeing an increase in playing time plus all the question marks surrounding the center position, it’s hard to have a lot of confidence heading into next season.

However, CBS Sports seems to have a lot of faith in Michigan State next year as analyst Gary Parrish has the Spartans included in his top 25 and one rankings.

Michigan State slides into these rankings (barely) at No. 26. However, even this ranking is extremely surprising to me. If it were up to me, I’d probably have MSU a lot further down, maybe in the 35-40 range, but maybe that’s just me being negative after multiple bad seasons in a row.

But what could cause CBS Sports to be that much higher on MSU than I am? Maybe they have that much faith in Tom Izzo to be able to figure it out like he usually does. Or maybe they think some players like Fidler, Jaden Akins, or Jeremy Fears Jr. will take a big step forward.

Is it possible for Michigan State to become a top 25 team next season? Absolutely. I just don’t think they’ve earned to have that title in the preseason. However, as long as Izzo is the head coach at MSU I'll always have at least a little faith that Michigan State will have a special season. I just hope that is proven to be accurate this time around.

Other Big Ten teams ranked:

Purdue (12), Ohio State (14), Indiana (17), UCLA (18) and Rutgers (22)