Hey everyone, we are just days away from the start of college basketball. We hope you have been enjoying our preseason coverage. One more article before we share our predictions for the MSU season. This
article was spearheaded by Connor Lemons at the Ohio State page, Land Grant Holy Land. A couple weeks ago, he got all 16 of the Big Ten SB Nation writers together (USC and UCLA do not have their own site) to offer their forecasts for the upcoming season. You can read that article here.
As you can imagine, Purdue was the overwhelming favorite to win this year’s Big Ten Championship. They received 13 of 16 first place votes. The other 3 votes went to a school that will not be named. Here is how that poll shook out:
- Purdue, 285 (13)
- Michigan, 267 (3)
- Illinois, 238
- UCLA, 236
- Michigan State, 218
- Wisconsin, 202
- Oregon, 201
- Ohio State, 156
- Iowa, 153
- Indiana, 143
- Maryland, 131
- USC, 119
- Washington, 115
- Nebraska, 94
- Northwestern, 63
- Minnesota, 54
- Rutgers, 32
- Penn State, 29
Our Spartans came in 5th in this poll. I had us higher, placing MSU 2nd.
We also made predictions for individual awards.
Braden Smith, Purdue’s point guard, was the favorite for Player of the Year, getting all but three votes. His teammate, Trey Kaufman-Renn received two of the votes, including mine, and UCLA’s Donovan Dent got the other one.
Freshman of the year was next, with ten different players getting at least one vote. Kayden Mingo from Penn State received 3 votes to win this poll. I kept it in house and voted for Cam Ward. That selection has not looked good based on our two exhibition games.
No Spartans made the 1st or 2nd All-Big Ten teams from our survey. Coen Carr did garner one vote (from me) and, curiously, Kaleb Glenn also appeared on one ballot.
So how does this apply to MSU? You saw Steve’s article on the non-conference portion of the schedule yesterday. Now, we’ll give you a brief look at the conference lineup. The Big Ten season is a 20-game ordeal. Each team plays everyone once while getting a second game against three of the teams. In 2025-26, the three teams that MSU will face twice are Indiana, Rutgers, and u*m. Appropriately, those will be the final three opponents we face before the conference tournament. The Hoosiers are predicted to finish 10th in our survey while the Scarlet Knights came in all the way down at 17.
The regular season finale will be in ann arbor. Our Senior Day will be the Rutgers game on a Thursday night (which is unfortunate as it should always be a Saturday or Sunday). Our game against Purdue will be a road game this year, as will Oregon and Washington, which will be played three days apart so it is just one trip out west. UCLA and USC come to East Lansing this season. The third team in our survey, Illinois, will also make the trip to the Breslin for this year’s matchup.
We will share more of our predictions for how MSU will do in the Big Ten this year when Mike, Steve, Lucas, and I share our prophecies tomorrow. In the meantime, let’s hear from you. Who are some of the names, at MSU or elsewhere, that you think could be up for some of the awards given out annually?
