Madison, Wis. - Shannon Brown stood in the visitor's locker room at the Kohl Center with his head down and tears welled up in his eyes. Alan Anderson leaned against the Badger's red lockers, shaking his head in disbelief.
The body language of the two players, 30 minutes after a 77-64 beating from No. 21 Wisconsin, sums up how the Spartans are feeling about themselves.
They're down. They're upset. They're angry. They're confused.
But the Spartans refuse to give up.
"When you take a hard hit, you can't just lay down - you have to get up," said Anderson, a junior swingman who had eight points and four assists in the loss.
"We just have to keep fighting, no matter what happens. You can't just keep getting beaten up. You have to keep fighting."
The conference-opening loss to Wisconsin (11-2 overall, 2-0 Big Ten) saw the Spartans in a hole no one imagined before the season began.
MSU (5-7, 0-1) had elite aspirations in early November. The team was tabbed No. 3 in the nation and was a popular pick by many experts to make a trip to San Antonio for the Final Four - MSU's fourth in six years.
The Spartans were returning the junior trio of guards Chris Hill and Kelvin Torbert, and swingman Anderson, who all have seen significant playing time since their freshmen seasons. Sophomore center Paul Davis was projected to be one of the best big men in college basketball.
Add in the recruiting class, which featured two McDonald's All-Americans in Brown, a shooting guard, point guard Brandon Cotton and an April trip to Texas seemed imminent.
But, many obstacles have obstructed the Spartans' path, most notably the nonconference schedule.
MSU lost all six of the "big" games on the brutal slate, including a humiliating 22-point loss to Duke at Breslin Center.
Cotton, who was counted on to fill the point guard void, suffered a stress fracture after the team's first game, and left the team after a combination of family problems and lack of playing time.
"We're a family, man, we can't let other people break us up," Anderson said. "We can't let each other break us up."
The last time the Spartans were two games under .500 was during the 1987-88 season when MSU finished 10-18.
To put it in perspective, that team featured Spartan star Steve Smith as a freshman.
It's true the season is only 12 games old, but MSU's sloppy play and inability to mirror the kind of defense it featured when the Spartans won four straight Big Ten Championships might hinder a turnaround.
"We're always in a game, always battling," Brown said. "There are just too many turnovers and swing points. That needed to change yesterday."
Now, unless the Spartans do stage a turnaround, the postseason tournament is most likely to feature MSU head coach Tom Izzo and his squad in the National Invitation Tournament.
"People are going to be against us," Anderson said. "People are against us right now. We just have to stick together."
Izzo's main concern isn't turnovers, because that is something that can be corrected.
He isn't so much concerned with his team falling apart either.
His main area of focus - bring back the grit and toughness that the MSU teams, that went to three straight Final Fours, featured. That, he said, is the only way this team will dig itself out of the hole.
"This team isn't playing the way this program has played," Izzo said.
"I do not feel like we're checking well enough. I think that is so much a coach's responsibility, a player's responsibility, and what you like to hang your hat on. And, right now, we're not hanging our hat."
After surrendering a 12-point lead to Wisconsin and letting costly turnovers and mental mistakes snowball into a 13-point defeat, Davis refused to say the season was history.
He still believes the Spartans have the personnel not only to make the NCAA Tournament, but to make a run in it.
Obviously, we're upset we lost, but we still got 15 more games," Davis said. "And we showed ourselves a glimpse of what we can do.
"It's definitely an upside watching those first 10 minutes. We just have to keep playing our game."
