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

Octboer 17, 2023: Purdue fans must be struggling to properly define last season's team. Was it a successful one where they ran away with the Big Ten conference championship, won the Big Ten Tournament, secured a number one seed in the NCAA, and had a national player of the year in Zach Edey? Or was the year a failure where despite their #1 seed they failed to get out of the first round losing to a...

October 16, 2023: 4* combo guard Jase Richardson committed to MSU yesterday adding to an already impressive 2024 recruiting class for Tom Izzo and the Spartans. Long time Michigan State fans will recognize the Richardson last name because Jase's father is former national champion and long time NBA player, Jason Richardson. Although Jase lacks some of the attributes of his father, namely his height...

October 12, 2023: It's hard to describe the Ohio State Buckeyes' season last year as anything but an unmitigated disaster. A horrendous 13th place finish in the Big Ten, a defensive rating in the 200s, and nowhere near sniffing an NCAA bid. Our questions about Chris Holtman and whether he can take the next step haven't changed. The biggest liability for the Buckeyes has been defense where they str...

October 9, 2023: Throughout the 2000s, Wisconsin was the epitome of consistency. The Badgers were always in the thick of things in the conference and aside from Michigan State, was probably the best team year in and year out. They racked up a lot of conference titles and NCAA tournament appearances over those 20 years. However, under the leadership of Greg Gard, Wisconsin has been just a touch les...

October 5, 2023: After a year in the wilderness with the abrupt midseason departure of former head coach, Mark Turgeon, the Terrapins returned again to prominence in the Big Ten last year. They did it with transfer point guard Jahmir Young under new head coach Kevin Willard from Seton Hall. Maryland made its hay at home last year in the Big Ten but struggled on the road despite being a fairly soun...

October 2, 2023: The Indiana Hoosiers are considered one of the Blue Bloods of college basketball yet their program hasn't been at asustained elite level since Bobby Knight was head coach. That's a long time and Rod Woodson was brought in to reconstruct this languishing basketball program and put it on good footing for the next coach - whomever that is going to be.  However, despite Indiana's mode...

September 28, 2023: They say there are a few things you can count on in this world: death, taxes, Iowa not playing defense, and now Illinois not having a point guard is on that list. Once again, the Illini are without a point guard as they have been unable to recruit a capable guard for the job or find one in the transfer portal. Perhaps it's just really bad luck or maybe something else is going o...

September 25, 2023: The Iowa Hawkeyes enter the 2023-24 season much as they have for the past few - with questions. However, to Head Coach Fran McCaffrey's credit, Iowa has overcome their apparent deficiencies to easily make the NCAA tournament. Two years ago, after losing a great player in Luka Garza, they found another great set of players in the Murray twins. Well, Keegan and now Kris Murray ar...

September 21, 2023: Although basketball is a distant second in terms of importance to Michigan fans, there is still a good tradition of winning. However, Juwan Howard and the Wolverines seem to be slowly spiraling the drain. They enter the 2023-24 season after what can only be described as a disappointing season where they not only missed the NCAA tournament but lost in the NIT first round in a he...

September 18, 2023: Rutgers has quietly become a serious pest and threat to teams in the Big Ten. After spending years as the league doormat, the Scarlet Knights are not only a legitimate challenge each night but have become somewhat of a regular in the NCAA tournament. Steve Pikiell has done a masterful job in creating a real program at a university with virtually no basketball tradition. However...

September 14, 2023: Although Purdue and its steamrolling through the Big Ten last year was the main headline - Northwestern may have had an even better season (at least compared to expectations). Chris Collins' crew found 'it' last year and rocketed up to the top of the conference mainly through a tenacious defense. Collins was perhaps a little bit on the hot seat, but after a second NCAA tourname...

September 11, 2023: Fred Hoiberg and the Cornhuskers had a moderately successful season last year. They nearly finished .500 in league play and went 6-2 down the home stretch largely behind the emergence of Keisei Tominaga and his infectious personality and deadliness from behind the arc. Last year, Nebraska was finally not awful on the defensive end of the ball or on the boards. The question comi...

September 10, 2023: Well, MSU fans who went to bed Saturday night feeling pretty good about their football team awoke Sunday to some very sobering news. It turns out that Head coach Mel Tucker, is the subject of a serious Title IX investigation alleging sexual misconduct with a former off campus individual. His coaching future with Michigan State is probably over as we await the next steps within...

September 7, 2023: In perhaps the most surprising season in the Big Ten (outside of Purdue winning and then face planting in the NCAA tourney), the Penn State Nittany Lions did what few thought possible. Micah Shrewsberry cobbled together a team of veterans, grad transfers, and portal additions without any size and managed to get a .500 record and NCAA tourney berth.  Not only did PSU make the NCA...

September 4, 2023: Head coach Ben Johnson and the Minnesota Gophers are coming off of a statistically historically poor season. Out of 351 division-1 teams, the Gophers rated 235 in KenPom which was easily the worst in Big Ten. This is following a relatively successful year for a team that was cobbled together by Johnson with mostly transfers. Unfortunately for the Gophers, their weak roster was p...

September 1, 2023: MSU finally released it's non conference schedule and it has a few surprises. First, there is no true road game which is very unusual for Tom Izzo. He usually likes to challenge his team at least once in a hostile environment before the Big Ten season really gets under way. Second, the schedule is much more manageable this year without games sandwiched between crazy travel sched...

August 23, 2023: Tom Izzo and Spartans are already off to a great start in solidifying their next class of high school recruits for the 2024 class. They have already received commitments from talented 6'5" dead eye shooting Kur Teng and 6'11" big man Jesse McCulloch who we would assume makes up half of the planned class for 2024. To round out the class, MSU is seriously working on landing 6'3" com...

August 16, 2023: 6' 2" sophomore point guard Tre Holloman had a very solid freshman year playing nearly 9 minutes a game as a backup to AJ Hoggard. He was solid defensively and good protecting the ball with nearly a 2.5:1 assist to turnover ratio. Not relied upon to score last year, almost certainly we can expect to see him contribute more on the offensive side of the ball this year. Tre has been...

August 9, 2023: 6'5" freshman wing Gehrig Normand joins us again to discuss his first impressions at Michigan State. Our sit down went down a number of avenues from what he thinks of East Lansing (in the summer), Moneyball, his freshmen teammates, and coach Izzo. When we asked him what he thought of the yelling from Izzo and the staff he simply shrugged it off and said it showed they actually care...

August 7, 2023: The Big Ten was at it again last week as it continues to metastasize across America. After poaching UCLA and USC last year, the Big Ten added Oregon and Washington to its prizes. With 18 member schools spanning both coasts, the Big Ten is changing the nature of its athletic competition and even scheduling the regular season - not to mention the postseason - will be complicated. Any...

August 2, 2023: MSU sophomore big man Carson Cooper joined us to talk about his strange and sudden recruitment to Michigan State, last season, the off season, and what he expects coming into the year. Carson talked to us about how he and the other centers have transformed their bodies in the off season and what practices are like with the freshmen. Not only has Cooper been working on his upper bod...

July 26, 2023: Lansing's annual pro-am basketball tournament that features Michigan State's roster, Moneyball, is happening again this year. This year's free to the public event at Holt High School allows for all Spartan fans an opportunity to get an early glimpse of the incoming freshmen and a peek at how last year's players are progressing. As always, defense is optional at Moneyball so there's...

July 19, 2023: Famous MSU walk-on to starter, Tim Bograkos joined us to talk about what it was like playing for Coach Izzo back in the early 2000s. Tim became such an iconic player in Izzo's early career that the annual walk-on honor for MSU is named the Bograkos award. Bograkos is probably most famous for hitting the game winning 3 point shot against Kentucky in Rupp Arena where Izzo quipped he w...

July 12, 2023: Rod & Eric sit down to go over their top 5 favorite MSU NCAA tournament wins (minus the title wins). In a fan base with a spoil of riches, the two only have one game that are on both lists. With over 40 games to choose from there are certainly different games that listeners will have as their favorites too. Are you looking for Spartan gear? There’s only one place to go to get your M...

July 5, 2023: Diamonds in the rough, development successes, needle in a haystack. Whatever you call players who weren't on many teams' radars yet turn into big time impact players (and maybe all stars) it turns out MSU has had quite a few. We focused this summer discussion on just the players in the rather modern era (Tom Izzo era) since recruiting services were not quite as reliable or available...