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The Spartans have been going through a whirlwind of chaos in most of their sports recently, but the basketball program has been able to get through it all without losing much of its momentum, and if anything, they are actually more poised to succeed than last year.
They have reasonable belief in their players, such as Jordan Scott, who have high ceilings and floors to accompany talent with rough edges that are being balanced out over the years with players such as Coen Carr.
They have even had success within the school itself because of the return of president Kevin Guskiewicz, which single-handedly raised the ceiling of the team, but not everything has been perfect.
This is because the Spartans were forced to say goodbye to Jaxon Kohler and Carson Cooper, the two big men who were the most consistent leaders around aside from Izzo, but even then, there is still good to come from it, because Izzo has been hard at work finding replacements.
The First Replacement: Ethan Taylor Surprisingly, or not surprisingly because of the team's reputation with Izzo, MSU managed to land Ethan Taylor, who actually outsizes both Kohler and Cooper, being a pretty big upgrade to the room that was already pretty big.
His height comes in at 7'1" and with the size comes a passion that was going to be questionable with many other recruits, but not Taylor, who is already showing that he wants to skyrocket in skill in East Lansing.
Izzo rarely allows freshmen to be starters right away, and that will most likely be the case for Taylor; however, when he is on the court, he is bound to make a massive difference that will allow both the experienced players on the team to thrive while spacing out the floor for his fellow freshmen.
The Second Replacement: Anton Bonke While Anton Bonke is a name fewer fans will know, as he has been in college basketball for a while but not at the high level of the Big Ten, he comes in to replace Cooper almost perfectly.
Not only is he taller than even Taylor, standing at 7'2", but he plays the role of a traditional big man instead of looking to shoot from beyond the arc as Kohler did, and MSU will highly benefit from that.
If he can bring his game up to the level of the Big Ten, Bonke will be the game changer for MSU this season, but if he can't, there will likely not be a true replacement around.