EAST LANSING, Mich. _ Michigan State's path to repeating as Big Ten tournament champions won't be easy.
A year ago, Tom Izzo's team entered as the No. 2 seed before winning three games in three days. This year, the Spartans will need to win four in four days, but Izzo also thinks they can do that after a chaotic regular season in the conference.
"I've been in this league 30-some years, as a (graduate assistant) on up. You look at that tournament, tell me you'd rather play a No. 12 or a No. 7, tell me you'd rather play a No. 13 or a No. 5," Izzo said on a teleconference Monday. "I mean, it is wide-open. There's a lot of parity, and that means a lot of people beating up on each other."
The Spartans enter this week's tourney as the fifth seed and open play around 2:30 p.m. Thursday, against the winner of Wednesday's game between No. 12 Nebraska and No. 13 Penn State in Washington, D.C.
Teams in MSU's half of the bracket handed the Spartans five of their eight league losses, including two to top-seeded Purdue. The Nittany Lions, No. 8 seed Michigan and No. 9 seed Illinois also beat them, all away from the Breslin Center.
MSU (18-13, 10-8) dropped its final two games of the regular season, at Illinois and Maryland, last week after winning six of eight to climb into a single-bye position for the tournament. Should the Spartans get through their opening matchup against the Cornhuskers or Nittany Lions, No. 4 seed Minnesota awaits for a matinee Friday. MSU swept the Gophers this season.
Get to Saturday, and one of three teams that already has beaten the Spartans _ the Boilermakers, Wolverines or Illini _ will be the barrier to making a fourth straight appearance in the Big Ten tournament title game. MSU won the league's automatic NCAA Tournament berth in 2014 and last year. It fell to Wisconsin in 2015 before going on a Final Four run afterward.
"We just gotta worry about now, the present," freshman forward Miles Bridges said Saturday. "We just gotta win as many games as we can and try to get to the championship and, hopefully, win a Big Ten championship. It's up to us if we want to or not."
After Saturday's 63-60 loss at Maryland in the regular-season finale, Izzo spoke about trying to change the perception of the Big Ten. He noted that the Atlantic Coast Conference and Pac-12 have their defenders.
"I just want to make sure everybody else gives us the same respect, because parity doesn't mean poor," Izzo said Monday. "Sometimes parity means we're deeper, top to bottom. So I think the tournament is wide-open more so than it's ever been."
