Across the ESPN analyst panel, the evaluations were as mutual as a jury voting on whether or not to punish a terrorist if captured. The opinion was overwhelmingly one-sided from all five of them.

“Finally, Michigan State and Duke,” Seth Greenberg said of his national championship matchup, “I really like Michigan State. I picked them at the beginning of the year. I think they’re the most complete basketball team; they’re healthy, they’re attacking people in transition, they’re physical defensively, and they rebound the ball.”

Next up was Jay Bilas.

“…I think Michigan State, healthy, is gonna cut down the nets.”

Digger Phelps?

“…With an experienced Tom Izzo and Michigan State [team], [they] knock off Oklahoma State and win the national championship.”

Jay Williams?

“For my national champion, I take Michigan State. I think this is the year for Tom Izzo and Keith Appling.”

Wait, is Dick Vitale going to make it a sweep, here? Is a fourth-seed going to be the outright pick to win it all?

“I love the Spartans,” he started in that excited, out-of-breath voice only Dicky V can speak in. “I like the fact they’re healthy, chip on their shoulder, I got Michigan State marchin’ on.”

“When it’s said and done(!), celebration in East Lansing(!), Magic Johnson goes crazy(!), and they win the national title!”

Bold as wasabi, right? People see a record of 26-8, 12-6 in conference, then all the experts’ predictions, then grimace. Here’s a little look into the exact reason all this hype is spot-on, as it answers the grimaces.

All any analyst could say, even apart from those five, was the “I said it all year” or a reference to “at the beginning of the year” before announcing Michigan State as his pick. After all, the Spartans were ranked as the #2 team in the country at the beginning of the year. This was an 18-1 team running face-first into a full month of injuries and stretch of struggles, eventually dropping six of 10 games in those four weeks.

All bloodied season, crutches and casts sprouted up like green beauty does in May, though the outlook was anything but beauty for the green Spartans of East Lansing—at least by Michigan State men’s basketball standards. Coach Tom Izzo has had a senior class reach the Final Four at some point in their career six of the last 15 seasons, the most under any coach in that span of time.

By the time the Spartans had fallen in the rankings—fallen along with their health, that is—it certainly seemed as though that this year’s senior group of Adreian Payne, Keith Appling, and Dan Chapman would go a career completely foreign to Final Fours. The ride from two to TWENTY-two in the rankings was as nagging as the injuries themselves.

First it was surefire NBA lottery pick Gary Harris sidelined for a few games with a bulky cast on his foot. Then it was at-the-time backup power forward Matt Costello clamped to his bed for two weeks with mono—and very limited minutes of play the following week. Then it was potential first-round NBA pick Adreian Payne out almost a whole month with plantar fasciitis.
Amidst that month bereft of their dominant post presence, starting power forward and yet another first-round caliber player in Branden Dawson slammed his hand on a table during film session, putting him out for an entire month as well. Just as Payne came back, All-Big Ten point guard Keith Appling was out for a week with an injured right (shooting) wrist.
Players came down one at a time like a line of dominoes, and the preceding dominoes that had already fell were getting back up as the others simultaneously fell. It just seemed like an ongoing series of misfortunes. Throughout the month of February, compact with the bulk of the ever-important Big Ten conference games, backup post players, sophomore Matt Costello and freshman Gavin Schilling, were demanded to fill the void.

With as great of a step as that was, completely unforeseen, their inexperience brought fresh from the bench to the most important stretch of the regular season soon was developing. Production, particularly in the rebounding category, was not up to the standards of the team’s #2 rank in the country they boasted early on in the year. That much became evident.

Due to the lack of any substantial size or athleticism in the frontcourt, along with the inconsistent rollercoaster of effort they had been criticized of riding, the Spartans plummeted to 66th in the country in rebounding—very uncharacteristic for an Izzo team and program ranked in the top 10 nationally 11 times in rebounding margin during Izzo’s past 18 seasons.

But that unassuming frontcourt of inexperience going 4-6 in that 10-game stretch against the toughest conference in the country is very understandable, just unacceptable in their eyes.

In Appling’s first four games back, his wrist was noticeably bothering him. Costello and Schilling still replacing Dawson, the Spartans went 1-3, including bizarre losses to Nebraska and Illinois due to cold shooting, struggles to ever find any real rhythm offensively, and, again, horrid rebounding. In that stretch, Appling went a combined 6-for-12 for 4.6 points a game, along with 1-for-8 from the charity stripe. Teams were daring him to shoot with his bad wrist, and he completely refused to. He’d maturely respond to the media’s prodding questions of his injury with the intentions of having “no excuses,” as he’d say.

When Dawson finally came back, it completely flipped the dynamic of the team on both ends. In the three-game Big Ten tournament, Dawson slashed to the rim from face-up moves, bullied his matchup with his back to the basket, and used his athleticism to get up the floor in the Spartans’ up-tempo intentions to create transition opportunities. All three games much of the same, they beat Northwestern by 16, #12 Wisconsin by 8, and #8 Michigan by 14.

Generalizations like these, of Dawson’s contributions to a team that needed him, may not do him justice, but this certainly will: through those three tournament games—games Izzo dubbed as part of his “most important Big Ten tournament”—Dawson shot a combined 21-for-28 (75 percent!) from the field, for 15 points a game, and hauled down seven rebounds a game.

This was the turning point analysts had predicted and preached would be the rise to the pinnacle of their potential.

“I feel like [Michigan State] is one of the top teams if not the top team in the country when they’re healthy,” former Michigan Wolverine and ESPN analyst Jalen Rose said weeks ago.

Since the Big Ten tournament, Rose’s quote—provocative at the time yet said all throughout the start of the season—is now being brought back from the dead.

“I have felt from the beginning that healthy and together, Michigan State is the best team in the country,” Jay Bilas said recently, echoing Rose’s thoughts.

It’s every analyst agreeing that this team is primed and hungry with as much talent from head to toe as anybody. Heck, even Barack Obama predicted Sparty to bring the rings to East Lansing in his bracket.

“There are people around here that pronounced us dead a week ago,” Izzo said. “All of a sudden we went from the ugly duckling to the prom queen.”

Surely, that’s a positive transition heading into The Big Dance.