EAST LANSING, Mich. — The Spartans won't be a very deep team during the upcoming 2022-23 college basketball season, as they have only 10 players with scholarship on the roster.
Michigan State's head coach Tom Izzo could've gone to the transfer portal to fix that issue, but instead he decided to shorten the rotation.
Izzo has called his friend and former Villanova head coach Jay Wright for some advice. Wright knows what it takes to win with a six-to-seven man rotation before, as he's won two national championships with them.
Due to the Spartans lack of depth, playing with a compact roster is something Izzo is going to do this season.
Izzo says with the Spartans chemistry, he doesn't see any issues with a smaller rotation.
"There are plusses to playing six, and seven, and eight guys as compared to nine and ten," Izzo said. "The minuses are if you have injuries. But I don't worry about injuries. Nothing you can do about them."
While he might not be worried about injuries, Izzo is keeping close tabs on his practices to make sure his players are not being over worked.
"Just making sure that we're conditioned," Michigan State sophomore guard Jaden Akins said. "We've been working on our conditioning a lot, our stamina. Getting up and down. We want to play fast but you've got to be in shape to do that. Coach has talked about some things. We're still practicing really hard. We're cutting out some stuff because of the amount of guys we got to make sure that everybody is ready to go."
The Spartans will play Tennessee in a secret scrimmage before the exhibition against Grand Valley State on Nov. 1.
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