After winning the deepest Big Ten ever by the widest margin in his coaching career, Tom Izzo probably expected a little more respect than he’s been given to begin the 2025-26 season.
The reigning Big Ten champs are just No. 22 in the preseason AP Top 25, CBS Sports predicts that they may miss the NCAA Tournament this year, and the conference’s media projected the Spartans to finish sixth in their preseason poll.
It feels like the good ol’ days when everyone would overlook Izzo and the Spartans just for them to win the Big Ten and make a Final Four run. That’s not out of the question.
But that sixth-place projection in the preseason Big Ten poll is what confuses Izzo. He spoke about it on Thursday during Michigan State’s media day.
Michigan State Basketball Head Coach Tom Izzo on being projected sixth in the Big Ten by the preseason media poll:
— Kenny Jordan (@Kenny_Jordan5) October 16, 2025
“I don’t know how in the hell they would know.. we have five teams in our league that have ten new players. Some of those will work out to be positive, some will… pic.twitter.com/UxtWAydygc
Izzo usually doesn’t care about rankings and projections, and he likely still doesn’t, but he’s right, how would the media know that there are five teams better than his which just won the Big Ten by a whopping three games last season? They can’t possibly know that a handful of teams with all-new players will be better than a team that won the Big Ten and brings back four players with starting experience.
Seeing a fired-up Izzo should get all Spartan fans excited about the upcoming season. He says he’s more motivated than ever, and he got that juice back during the 2024-25 campaign.
Izzo is ready to prove all of these new doubters wrong. We have CBS Sports saying that the Spartans could miss the tourney and that the roster is full of “supply chain management students” while the Big Ten media is projecting the reigning champs to finish outside of the top five.
We’re all confused.