The Final Four Is Not On The Schedule - A Podcast Discussing Michigan State Basketball.

November 2, 2024: It's finally here! The MSU opener at the Breslin Center and the start of a new point guard era in the Green and White. Redshirt Freshman Jeremy Fears, Jr. will lead the team against the Monmouth Hawks in what they hope will be a better start to the season than last year.  There will be quite a few things we will be looking for in the game - notably offensive rebounding and tempo....

October 30, 2024: At Michigan State under Tom Izzo, we refer to various eras based on who is playing the point. So with the departure of AJ Hoggard, MSU has officially left the Hoggard Era and entered the Fears Era. Jeremy Fears, Jr. might have had his season last year cut short after suffering a gun shot wound in his leg from a random intruder over winter break. Fortunately for the Spartans and F...

October 29, 2024: Michigan State finished its last preseason tuneup against the Ferris State Bulldogs at the Breslin Center with a 85-67 victory. There were a lot of things to like about what we saw and a few negative aspects to the team. On the positive side we saw Frankie Fidler display what looks to be his scoring acumen. The freshmen tandem guards of Kur Teng and Jase Richardson were fantastic...

October 27, 2024: Michigan State takes on Ferris State for its only exhibition game played at the Breslin Center this season. Ferris is a perennial power int he GLIAC where Head Coach Andy Bronkema has led the Bulldogs to 4 regular season titles, 7 NCAA tournament appearances, and one national title in only 11 years. Make no mistake, Ferris will provide a good warm up challenge for the Spartans. H...

October 23, 2024: Michigan State received its second high school commitment yesterday with the announcement of 6'8" 210 pound Cam Ward from Upper Marlboro, Maryland. Ward joins fellow 4* Jordan Scott who committed recently and is also from the East coast. Ward brings a lot to the table for MSU both physically and in terms of skills. He has plus wing span of over 7' and a game that includes a good...

October 21, 2024: Once again, we have Purdue as the expected Big Ten champion this year. However, this season Painter's crew will have to do it without two time national player of the year Zach Edey. We expect that the season's success or 'failure' will largely come down to the play of point guard Braden Smith. Smith showed another gear last year with not only his shooting but also his composure....

October 17, 2024: Earlier last season we thought Mike Woodson was a coach who wouldn't be returning. Despite the underwhelming results with what Indiana has brought to the court, the Hoosiers have doubled down on Woodson by spending big in the portal to bring some big names to Bloomington. Most notably, is Oumar Ballo from Arizona. The 7 footer is rumored to have received over $1 million and there...

October 14, 2024: There's no question that last season was a disappointing year for fourth year head coach, Mick Cronin, as the Bruins had a losing record and missed the NCAA Tournament. The young team struggled especially on the offensive side ranking a dismal #152 in Division 1. But this year offers a lot of promise as Cronin has gone to the portal and brought in a lot of promising transfers. Al...

October 13, 2024: Michigan State visited Marquette, MI today to take on Tom Izzo's alma mater, Northern Michigan, in a rare early preseason exhibition game. Another signature event scheduled by the Spartans as they played in the Superior Dome where Izzo's number was retired earlier. As for the game, despite being one of the better teams in the D2 GLIAC, NMU wasn't able to really put up much resist...

October 11, 2024: Thursday evening, Virginia 4* high school recruit, Jordan Scott, committed to Michigan State. Scott is a 6'7" wing who ranks inside the top 75 in most recruiting rankings. He is talented and versatile where he has played positions 1-5 on his AAU team in the UnderArmor circuit. Scott is a winner and comes from great college basketball pedigree as both his parents played high level...

October 9, 2024: Head coach, Brad Underwood, just had his most successful season at Illinois leading the Illini to a Big Ten Tournament championship, second place in the Big Ten regular season, and a trip to the Elite 8. Although it seems Underwood has struggled to maintain a core of recruits to stick around Champaign more than a few years, he has had a number of successful years of play. Last yea...

October 7, 2024: Ohio State finally parted ways with Chris Holtman last season after many years of underperformance. There's definitely patience at a football school like Ohio State but it isn't unlimited. A general lack of success and missing the tournament multiple years in a row led to his dismissal. Surprisingly, the Buckeyes ended up hiring interim coach, Jake Diebler, who had quite a bit of...

October 3, 2024: The expressions "dumpster fire, clown show, apocalypse" to describe last year's season for the Wolverines probably all work. Michigan had their worst finish in 60 years and a number of really weird circumstances. Head coach Juwan Howard started the season recovering from a heart surgery and while serving as an assistant coach got tossed from a game. Howard got into some sort of al...

September 30, 2024: The 2023-24 season was obviously a disappointment for the Scarlet Knights as they failed to make the tournament for the second straight year. It wasn't entirely unexpected with the loss of Paul Mulcahy and Cam Spencer to the transfer portal. However, Rutgers made a huge splash by early Spring where it became clear that they were going to land two top 5 high school recruits in D...

September 26, 2024: Last year second year head coach, Kevin Willard, and the Terrapins had a season they'd like to forget. Despite bringing back some key veterans and picking up highly rate recruits, the team took a turn for the worse last year. Nearly elite defense was negated by an abysmal offensive presence especially outside the 3 point line.  In only his third year, Willard certainly isn't on...

September 23, 2024: The third PAC-12 team we have previewed is the Oregon Ducks as they shift to a deeper basketball league that they are used to. Oregon has had a tradition of boom and bust teams and with the close relationship with Phil Knight and Nike, there is every reason to believe Oregon will be competitive. This year's team features some intriguing transfers along with a few valuable holdo...

September 19, 2024: The Nebraska Cornhuskers finally made it back to the NCAA Tournament last year - the first for Head Coach Fred Hoiberg - but it resulted in yet another loss. Nebraska still hasn't won an NCAA Tournament game despite 8 tries over the years. It wasn't long ago that we talked about how maybe Fred Hoiberg would find himself on the hotseat in Lincoln. However, his team improved defe...

September 16, 2024: The USC Trojans are joining the Big Ten this year and although they are mostly thought of as a football power, they have some history of occasional success in basketball. Fans might recall MSU's matchup in the first round of the NCAA tournament in 2023 with a talented and dangerous Trojan squad. Well, the Trojans have overhauled the entire team this year as head coach Andy Enfi...

September 12, 2024: Last year was a strange one for the Wisconsin Badgers. They started out blistering hot in the Big Ten behind tremendous athletic scoring of transfer AJ Storr with a halfway record of 8-1 and first place in the conference. Then the wheels (sort of) came off as they limped across the line to finish 11-9. A bright note was despite the swoon the Badgers managed to knock off top see...

September 9, 2024: After 5 straight years in the NCAA tournament, the Hawks missed the Tourney this year without the services of any of the Murray twins. It was a largely forgettable year for Iowa and head coach, Fran McCaffrey with a middle of the pack Big Ten finish and a team that statistically wasn't nearly as good as recent years. The Hawkeyes struggled more than their usual abysmal self on d...

September 5, 2024: Head coach Mike Rhoades took over at Penn State after the premature departure of Micah Shrewsbury. He was left with pretty much a decimated roster and had to rebuild from transfers and a couple players from his previous coaching job. Surprisingly, the experiment sort of worked last year as the Nittany Lions became a competitive team in January and fought hard to be at the bottom...

September 2, 2024: Chris Collins has gone from us questioning if he would hold onto his job into now sending the Wildcats to back to back NCAA tournament bids and wins. Clearly the greatest coach Northwestern has ever had Collins will now try to establish something new - consistent winning. But he will have to do this without Big Ten killer, Boo Buie, who led the team the last two years with outst...

August 29, 2024: The Big Ten welcomes in four teams from the PAC-12 this year which includes the Washington Huskies. Not only are the Huskies facing change by coming into a new league but they also have a new coach. Danny Sprinkle takes over for Mike Hopkins who only managed to go 12 games over .500 overall in seven seasons in Seattle.  Sprinkle will largely take over an entirely new roster but on...

August 26, 2024: The season isn't far away so it's time to start our previews and sneak peak into teams in the Big Ten's 18 teams. We always begin our trek following Rod's expectations from 18 to 1. This year, Rod will again project Minnesota as the cellar dweller. Head coach, Ben Johnson, seems to be snake bit in Minneapolis. After an impressive inaugural season piecing together a bunch of mid ma...

August 20, 2024: Michigan State left for Spain for an exhibition basketball tour. College teams are only allowed to do this every 4 years or so but it had been 9 years for MSU since their last overseas trip. Coach Izzo felt it was time with a new point guard and five new players on the roster. The Spartans opened up play with a close victory over the Madrid All-Stars on Thursday followed by a blow...