Michigan State Hoops: DK's State of the Union

The loss at the Barn to Minnesota this past Tuesday felt like a movie that Michigan State men’s basketball fans have been watching on repeat for the last four years. Relatively decent play for 25-30 minutes, a big run by the opposing team, and then the inability to close out a game away from the Breslin Center against a decent team.

It’s been exhausting to watch a basketball season year after year where every single game demands a discussion of the program trajectory, but this is where we are at once again this season -- on the bubble and fighting again to keep the tourney streak alive.

And therein lies the problem.

Since Cassius Winston and Xavier Tillman said their goodbyes, MSU is 73-48 overall and 37-34 in conference play. Outside of Aaron Henry’s late season heroics to propel MSU to the NCAA tournament in 2020-21 with three massive top-11 KenPom wins to close the year, MSU can count on two fingers the quality teams they’ve beaten the past few years (Purdue- 14th in 2021-22 at home and Marquette - 10th in 2022-23).

The Big Ten conference as a whole has been down overall, and yet the Spartans have finished eight, seventh and fourth, and are on track for another middle of the pack year. Lose Saturday at home against Illinois (one of the two remaining quad 1 games in the regular season), and things begin to look real dicey.

But forget the here and now for a moment, let’s focus on the big picture.

Where does the program go from here and what tangible changes need to occur to get out of this recent rut?