2016-17 Michigan State basketball is quite young, but that’s the wave of future in college basketball- winning primarily through a good mix of blue chip recruit freshmen complemented with a few talented veterans.
MSU, currently ranked 12th in the AP poll, has both with #TheClass, as Michigan State basketball coach Tom Izzo landed the best freshmen haul of his entire career for 2016-17.
ESPN Analyst Jay Bilas did a media conference call this week, and he assessed the quality and the prospects of this Michigan State basketball team. Bilas thinks Michigan State, Purdue and Indiana are the teams to beat this year.
“The overall quality of the landscape in college basketball, is often determined by the quality of the freshmen class,” said Bilas.
“We have an unbelievable amount of talent that’s coming into college basketball this year. The names might not be known right now, but people are going to be blown away when they see how good they are and how ready they are.”
“I’ve never seen a class this deep with quality talent, and it’s spread around pretty good. Duke, Kentucky, UCLA, certainly the rich got richer, I’d throw Michigan State in there.”
#TheClass consists of Miles Bridges, Josh Langford, Cassius Winston and Nick Ward. Click the names where highlighted to learn much more about player. While almost everyone else is picking Wisconsin to win the B1G this year, we get against the grain and predicted this Michigan State basketball team to finish on top of the league.
Here’s the rest of the B1G preseason power rankings.
“They have Eron Harris back who could lead the team in scoring, also Tum Tum Nairn is back who was injured, but they also have some outstanding freshmen. Nick Ward is better than a lot of people think and he’s ready to come in and play at a high level.”
“Miles Bridges had 33 points in their first exhibition. I think he only missed two shots out of 16. He was magnificent. You don’t see a lot of guys do that in their first game in a college uniform.”
Michigan State basketball will be smaller though this season. Gavin Schilling hasn’t been cleared to play yet, and they lost Ben Carter. No one quite knows if he’ll be back, and if so when.
“They’ve got a lot of talent, they just don’t have a ton of big guys,” Bilas said.
The Spartans will open the season tonight against #10 Arizona at 7 pm EST. The game is part of the ESPN created Armed Forces Classic, which takes place in Honolulu this season.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes regularly to the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication and Bold Global.
He also consistently appears on numerous radio and television talk shows all across the country. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram and Sound Cloud.