Last week, I told a friend the four teams in the best position to lock up Number One seeds in the NCAA Tournament were Kansas, Kentucky, Syracuse and Michigan State.

A week and three killer losses later, MSU (19-6, 9-3 Big Ten) has fallen out of that group.

It's amazing what an 8-day stretch can do in sports. A team can go from looking like Christina Milian to resembling something out of "Daybreakers." That's what's happened to the Spartans. Their last three opponents (Wisconsin, Illinois and Purdue) all shot better than 50 percent against MSU's defense. The three Ls came by an average of 12 points and players who had been steady for the lion's share of the season - Draymond Green and Durrell Summers - played like you'd think Tiger Woods would have the last few years with all the things he'd been hiding.

Ankle injury to reigning Big Ten Player of the Year Kalin Lucas aside, MSU hasn't put a complete game together since blasting Northwestern by 21 Jan. 2 in Evanston. Sure, the 9-0 start in conference LOOKED good, until you realize it came against the Wildcats, Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan, Hickory High, Carver High and the high school from "Hang Time." One of those wins was against Illinois, but that was before the Illini hit their current stride. There are good things that came out of that stretch, though. We saw that MSU could win tough games in hard-to-win gyms (Williams Arena); and we saw how clutch Lucas is.

That's why I'm not jumping off the bandwagon. These are the dog days of the college season. Sure, you want your team to go undefeated every year, but the likelihood of that happening is about as high as Kevin Federline's vertical leap. Two of the teams now on State's tail in the Big Ten title race (Purdue, Ohio State) had three-game skids of their own, now they look like they could make deep tournament runs. Plus, I trust coach Tom Izzo to straighten his guys out and find a way to make a deep run of their own.

Another thing on MSU's side is the upcoming schedule. Four of the Spartans' remaining six games are against three of the four worst teams in the conference (Michigan, Penn State and Indiana). Those three teams have combined to go 8-26 in Big Ten games. MSU gets Ohio State at home Feb. 21 and travels to West Lafayette to take on the Boilermakers Feb. 28.

I think MSU will straighten things out and go 5-1 in its last six games. That's due in part to having four games against teams that couldn't win a wheelchair basketball league and partly because there's too much pride and talent in East Lansing for the slide to continue.

Look for the Spartans to finish 24-7, 14-4 and share the regular season title with Purdue. After having my hopes of a one seed dashed in a week's time, I'm looking for the Spartans to be no lower than a three seed in the Big Dance.

What happens from there? Who knows.