This was not your typical Michigan State opener at the Breslin Center, not in the slightest. A near-empty arena. A socially distant bench. The absence of crowd noise and the presence of masks. Things were different. Things are different. On and off the court.
Cassius Winston and Xavier Tillman — two pillars of the back-to-back-to-back Big Ten championship squads — are off to the NBA. Roles filled by faces new and old had yet to be fully ironed out. This is nothing new, of course. Michigan State is a program that retools and reloads. That’s been a constant throughout Tom Izzo’s tenure. The annual expectation in East Lansing is that this team will compete for banners come March. Even as we begin what’s bound to be an unprecedented season of college basketball.
“All in all, it was a night of basketball,” Izzo said Wednesday after his team’s 83-67 victory over Eastern Michigan. “I think that’s what we all…
