{"id":51227,"date":"2025-08-01T00:00:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T00:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/51227\/"},"modified":"2025-08-01T00:00:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T00:00:07","slug":"michigan-state-basketball-dips-slightly-in-joe-lunardis-latest-bracketology-projection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/51227\/","title":{"rendered":"Michigan State basketball dips slightly in Joe Lunardi’s latest bracketology projection"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s not even August yet, but Michigan State basketball has been the topic of conversation for the past month because of the Moneyball Pro-Am.<\/p>\n

We’ve seen newcomers take the court and look like more-than-capable contributors like Trey Fort, Divine Ugochukwu, and Cam Ward. The team is going to look a lot different next season, but the talent is there to defend that Big Ten title.<\/p>\n

It feels early (because it is), but Joe Lunardi is already posting his ESPN bracketology<\/a> projections and he has already updated them a few times with all the offseason moves and storylines.<\/p>\n

Does he have Michigan State making the NCAA Tournament? Of course, but where will the Spartans be seeded? According to Lunardi, they’re dropping from his previous projections to a No. 5 seed.<\/p>\n

This feels like a fair spot for the Spartans. They were a No. 4 seed in his previous projections before the latest update, and I’m not sure what triggered the slight drop, but it could have something to do with Kaleb Glenn’s season-ending injury. That clearly plays a role in all of these projections because he was expected to be a big piece on the 2025-26 team.<\/p>\n

Lunardi has the Spartans facing Illinois State in Buffalo in the first round. The winner of that game will play Arkansas in round two — the Spartans face John Calipari’s Razorbacks in the regular season.<\/p>\n

Michigan State does bring back plenty of talent from Jeremy Fears Jr. to Jaxon Kohler to Coen Carr, so I could see them earn a top-three seed for a second straight season.<\/p>\n

But again, it’s too early to even project that. Tell that to Lunardi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s not even August yet, but Michigan State basketball has been the topic of conversation for the past…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51228,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,398,400,401,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-51227","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-basketball","11":"tag-ncaabasketball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}