It’s not common around East Lansing for MSU to be all but eliminated from winning the Big Ten regular season title with five games remaining, and even after a 88-69 win Sunday over Indiana, that’s the situation the Spartans (21-5, 8-5 Big Ten) find themselves in.
MSU would need five teams to lose one or more games during the final couple weeks of play, and would need first place University of Iowa to lose at least three of its final six games, assuming MSU wins out.
Senior Denzel Valentine, who had 30 points and 13 assists in MSU’s win over Indiana, said while he is disappointed that MSU’s chances at a regular season Big Ten title are all but gone, he knows his final season is winding down and he wants to step his game up to make a push for a first round bye in the tournament and so much more.
“(Getting a first-round bye is) huge,” Valentine said. “We want to get in that top four and control what we can control and that’s what we’re going to do. It’s hard, four days in a row. ... That’s hard.”
MSU has not gotten a bye in the first round of the tournament three times since it was created in 1998, having to play on the first day in only 2006, 2007 and 2011.
Junior guard Eron Harris said while he has never experienced the tournament, his teammates have stressed to him the importance of avoiding a Thursday game.
“From what my teammates and my coaches have been saying, it makes it so much more difficult when you’re playing on that Thursday,” Harris said. “You want to get a bye because that team that plays all four days is going to be a little more fatigued than the next team. So we want to get that little break and get some rest and come in and play as fresh as we can.”
After the win Sunday, MSU currently sits in a tie for sixth place with Purdue University and Ohio State University, just one game behind the University of Michigan for the fourth seed and half a game behind University of Wisconsin, who visits Breslin Center Thursday, for fourth place.
“It will be interesting to see what happens with some of these teams, there’s three or four of these teams that are back-end loaded, where they have more games on the road against tougher teams — at least a couple of them.” Izzo said at his press conference on Feb. 9.
Wisconsin has a tough slate of games down the stretch, including road games at MSU, Iowa and Purdue to close out the year, and U-M’s schedule isn’t much easier, as three of its final five games are on the road with road games at Ohio State, Maryland and Wisconsin. Senior forward Matt Costello knows the team still has a lot to play for, especially the seniors, who are looking to put their stamp on MSU’s basketball program.
“We’ve got a lot of stuff we’re playing for,” Costello said. “We’re playing for the wins record, we’re playing for a good seed in the Big Ten Tournament, missing the first two days and playing for a good seed in the NCAA Tournament.”
Izzo said whether or not they have to play on Thursday night does not matter as much to him, but instead said he just wants to see his team get better each and every game as MSU closes out the season.
“Get better everyday,” Izzo said after MSU’s win Saturday. “I don’t care where we’re ranked, I don’t care what we got. You wanted certain things because you didn’t want to play in the Thursday night game in the Big Ten Tournament. I don’t know if it matters. You want a higher seed that definitely matters. So we’re playing for those two things now. We’re not sitting here and thinking we can win the Big Ten, unless a bunch of people explode, so, not worried about that, I’m worried about us getting better every day.”
