Evanston, Ill. — At first glance, it might have seemed like no big deal.
No. 12 MSU beats Northwestern, 77-66. Rah rah. Big whoop. Knew it was coming.
But one look at the national scoreboard Saturday gave two reasons why the Spartans should take that win, run to the nearest bank and put it in savings as soon as possible.
Reason No. 1: Purdue 70, Wisconsin 62
Reason No. 2: Penn State 66, Illinois 65
Those are two of the Big Ten's top teams, losing to two of its bottom feeders. And Illinois was at home.
The Spartans (17-5 overall, 5-3 Big Ten) avoided such a meltdown, the significance of which wasn't lost on head coach Tom Izzo.
"It was a big road win because any road win in this league is a big road win," Izzo said.
He didn't even need to be that specific. Any win is big in this league, period.
After all, some left MSU for dead after it stumbled out of the Big Ten gate with consecutive losses at Illinois and Wisconsin.
In retrospect, that was more short-sighted than Post Cereals' recent decision to make Alpha-Bits sugar free.
(Outrageous, isn't it? That's another column.)
Those two losses were highly predictable, if for no other reason than this: The conference's elite have been nearly unbeatable at home. Even with Illinois' breakdown Saturday, the Big Ten's top seven teams are a combined 28-3 at home in conference play. Nobody will confirm it, but it seems as if the Big Ten has entered a lucrative endorsement deal with Under Armour whereby teams are contractually required to protect … this … house.
That's why, with a road win against Ohio State already under their belt, the Spartans are arguably ahead of the field right now in their quest for a Big Ten crown. They're in a three-way tie for fourth, but they still play all three teams ahead of them, and five of their last eight games are at Breslin Center.
And it's why MSU's toughest remaining game won't be against Illinois or Wisconsin or Michigan, but against a team it already beat by 30 this season. That would be the now-conference-leading Iowa Hawkeyes, who the Spartans play in Iowa City next Tuesday.
Izzo has said repeatedly that there's a simple formula for winning the Big Ten: hold serve at home + split on the road = cut down the nets and get interviewed by Erin Andrews.
The Spartans have done nothing to disrupt that equation.
They're perfect at home. They've lost three Big Ten road games, but none of them would be considered "bad" losses, a la Wisconsin's defeat at Purdue. If they can win two of their three remaining road games (Minnesota, Iowa, Indiana), they've got to be considered the favorites to win the conference.
That's not to say it'll be easy.
Izzo is still skeptical of his team's rebounding, a point he made abundantly clear last week when he called it "below sub-par." (This is not to be taken likely, as research by Gardening Weekly shows that no team has ever won its conference with sub-sub-par rebounding.)
The Spartans responded against Northwestern — granted, the Big Ten's worst rebounding team — with a 40-24 advantage on the glass. But they took a step backwards in ball handling, letting the Wildcats' full-court pressure force them into 17 uncharacteristic turnovers.
"We plug one hole and another one opened up," Izzo said after the game. "Now this week, we'll work on that hole. Hopefully we'll have enough plugs left to keep this dam from breaking before the season's over."
Here's one vote that there's no risk of East Lansing being flooded any time soon. The Spartans are the Big Ten's most talented, most experienced, most battle-tested team, and all those things point toward them emerging on top.
And if the Spartans can keep things together, the rest of the Big Ten will look at the conference standings at the end of the season, see the once-0-2 MSU at the top, shake their heads and quietly whisper to themselves.
"Dam."
Tom Keller is a State News men's basketball reporter. Reach him at kellert1@msu.edu.
