It's been a busy offseason for Michigan State basketball.

The Spartans started things off by losing Jase Richardson to the NBA Draft and Tre Holloman (NC State), Xavier Booker (UCLA), and Gehrig Normand (Santa Clara) to the transfer portal. On top of that, Jaden Akins, Frankie Fidler, and Szymon Zapala also moved on as they each exhausted their eligibility and that meant that Tom Izzo needed to live in the transfer portal.

Izzo landed Kaleb Glenn, Trey Fort, Divine Ugochukwu, and Denham Wojcik in the transfer portal while also bringing in Cam Ward and Jordan Scott with the 2025 class. They return key starters from last season like Jaxon Kohler, Jeremy Fears Jr., Coen Carr, and Carson Cooper, but a recent injury to Glenn has hurt the outlook of the upcoming campaign.

The roster for the upcoming season has plenty of talent, but the fact that it's so unproven worries some fans and experts.

This is going to be a really young Spartan team in 2025-26.

According to ESPN's Joe Lunardi, that won't much matter as the Spartans are still projected to earn a top-four seed for a second straight season.

Lunardi has Michigan State as a 4-seed in his way-too-early 2026 NCAA Tournament projections which were updated a couple of days ago. The Spartans would be facing Miami(OH) in the first round.

Other Big Ten teams to earn bids in Lunardi's projected tourney field were:

Purdue (1-seed)
Michigan (2-seed)
UCLA (4-seed)
Illinois (4-seed)
Ohio State (6-seed)
Wisconsin (6-seed)
USC (7-seed)
Oregon (7-seed)
Iowa (10-seed)
Maryland (10-seed)

Michigan State, in this projection, would be getting the third-best overall seed in the Big Ten, depending on whether UCLA or Illinois are considered higher 4-seeds.

I'm not buying into the hype of some of the top teams listed, but I do like where Michigan State stands heading into the season. Experts believe the Spartans will be good, but just not quite good enough to repeat as Big Ten champs.

Right where Izzo likes to be.