{"id":7921,"date":"2023-10-16T13:42:58","date_gmt":"2023-10-16T17:42:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/?p=7921"},"modified":"2023-10-16T13:42:58","modified_gmt":"2023-10-16T17:42:58","slug":"michigan-state-basketball-is-officially-no-4-in-preseason-ap-top-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/?p=7921","title":{"rendered":"Michigan State basketball is officially No. 4 in preseason AP Top 25"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Michigan State basketball is going to begin the season as the No. 4 team in the country. It&#8217;s officially hoops season.<\/h2>\n<p>The preseason AP Top 25 was released earlier on Monday and <a href=\"https:\/\/msuspartans.com\/sports\/mens-basketball\">Michigan State basketball<\/a> finds itself near the top of the list.<\/p>\n<p>Michigan State will start the season at No. 4 in the country. On top of that, the Spartans also received one first place vote.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Checking in at #4 to start the 23-24 season \ud83d\udfe2\u26aa\ufe0f <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/1fqUP48DJw\">pic.twitter.com\/1fqUP48DJw<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Michigan State Men&#39;s Basketball (@MSU_Basketball) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MSU_Basketball\/status\/1713949041548288170?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 16, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Michigan State finds itself in its first preseason poll since the 2020-21 season. That year, Michigan State was ranked No. 13 to start the season. This is also the Spartans first top-five preseason ranking since the Spartans began the 2019-20 season No. 1 in the country.<\/p>\n<h3>What does this mean for this season?<\/h3>\n<p>I\u2019m not someone who puts too much stock in preseason rankings. So, in short, this ranking means absolutely nothing. No national ranking will ever win you a basketball game, especially a preseason ranking. I\u2019m sure <a href=\"https:\/\/msuspartans.com\/staff-directory\/tom-izzo\/189\">Tom Izzo<\/a> will make his team well aware of that because he has had many teams ranked highly in the past that have fallen off.<\/p>\n<p>On the flip side, this does confirm one thing for Michigan State: expectations are sky high for this team.<\/p>\n<p>It has been a few years since we have expected a lot from our basketball team, but that is changing this year. A championship is on the mind for all of Spartan nation, which is something we haven\u2019t won since 2020.<\/p>\n<p>Michigan State last won the Big Ten title during the 2019-20 season. A Big Ten championship needs to be won at minimum before the season can be called a success. Beyond that, Michigan State also has national championship expectations as well. I will never say any team is \u201cNational Championship or bust.\u201d But I do expect the Spartans to look like one of the best teams in the country. A Final Four run may be a more realistic expectation, which hasn\u2019t been accomplished since 2019.<\/p>\n<h3>Everything is going right for Michigan State<\/h3>\n<p>Izzo has been on a tear recently, both on the court and in recruiting. Izzo just signed the fifth-ranked 2023 class and now has the seventh-best 2024 class after <a href=\"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/michigan-state-basketball-lands-4-star-cg-jase-richardson\/\">Jase Richardson committed to the Spartans on Sunday<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The Spartans are also coming off a solid finish to last season that saw them make a run to the Sweet 16.<\/p>\n<p>After a pretty average, maybe even below average, regular season, the Spartans looked like one of the best teams to end last year. A tough loss to Kansas State cut their season short, but that did not ruin hopes for this year. With <a href=\"https:\/\/msuspartans.com\/sports\/mens-basketball\/roster\/joey-hauser\/12516\">Joey Hauser<\/a> being the only key loss from last season and an extremely talented freshmen class coming in, we have every right to set our expectations sky high.<\/p>\n<h3>Other Big Ten teams ranked in the preseason AP Top 25<\/h3>\n<p>Let\u2019s take a look at who else was ranked in the Big Ten.<\/p>\n<p>3. Purdue<br \/>\n4. MSU<br \/>\n25. Illinois<\/p>\n<p>Others receiving votes:<\/p>\n<p>26. Wisconsin<br \/>\n30. Maryland<br \/>\n40. Indiana<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s go win some titles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s basketball season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":7934,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[190,189,504,211],"class_list":["post-7921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","tag-michigan-state-basketball","tag-michigan-state-spartans","tag-news","tag-tom-izzo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}