Michigan State basketball is about to tip off the start of the 2019-20 season.

Tom Izzo and the Spartans have already had some exhibition contests and are getting ready to start the regular season. As usual, Izzo’s squad will play a brutal stretch of non-conference games that includes No. 2 Kentucky, No. 4 Duke, and No. 12 Seton Hall. Michigan State will begin the season in a No. 1 vs No. 2 matchup against Kentucky on Tuesday.

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This week, ESPN college hoops analyst Jay Bilas shared some of his early thoughts on the UK-MSU game in a media opportunity with members of the press:

Q. I wonder what you make of the game Michigan State and Kentucky right off the bat?
JAY BILAS: Well, it’ll be great. We’ve got the four top-ranked teams. I’m not sure that after the first month they’re going to be the four best teams, but to start the season, to have one, two, three and four is going to be really fun.

Michigan State, I think everybody knows, a Final Four team last year, and they have a number of players back. But they’re very talented. They have experience. And I think they’re going to be, if not the best team, among the best teams all year. But it’s not an overpowering team.

We’re going to see a rotating No. 1 this year, and Kentucky is going to spend time at No. 1 because they have experience back, and as you know, a very talented group of freshmen coming in. I think after Calipari has them for a little while, they’re going to be — they’ve got the chance to be as good as anybody.

Q. What do you make of the match-up between Ashton Hagans and Cassius Winston?
JAY BILAS: Well, Winston is one is most accomplished guards in Michigan State history, and that’s saying something, and he’s got an outside chance of catching Bobby Hurley’s all-time assist record. He’s an amazing basketball player. You can talk about a lot of things that he’s not. He’s not big, he’s not athletic, but he knows how to play, and he figures out a way to win. He was the best player on the floor last year in the Elite 8 game against Duke. He was spectacular.

Ashton Hagans I think has improved from last year when he was excellent, but he’s as good of an on-ball defender as there is in college basketball. His ability to put pressure on Winston — I think one of the most important issues in the game is going to be ball security, and it has been an issue over the last several years with Michigan State, where although they like to get up and down the floor and score a lot in transition, they can be a little loose with the ball and turn it over.

If Kentucky can turn Michigan State over, and that starts primarily with Hagans and his pressure on the ball, that can be a difference maker in the game.

Q. I wanted to ask you, too, about their schedule, which is usually tough, but in the first five, six weeks, they’re going to play Kentucky, Duke, potentially Kansas, they’ve got to go to Seton Hall. How tough is that to play a schedule like that this early?
JAY BILAS: Yeah, Izzo decided not to schedule the Warriors because Klay Thompson was hurt and he wasn’t sure he’d get as much out of it. He’s always done this, and that’s one of the reasons he’s one of the best and most respected coaches out there. A lot of coaches will say, we’ll play anyone, anywhere, any time, and Tom actually does it. He knows his players like to play in those games, the fans like to see them, and he likes to coach in them. And he’s not afraid to get beat because he knows what comes from that. Like he’ll find out who you are and he’ll find out what you need to do in order to compete with the best.

And so I think it’s of great value. You know what it reminds me of, and it shows my age, Denny Crum used to do that with his Louisville teams. They would play back in the day, a lot of coaches would schedule these cupcake wins in the non-conference because they thought conference play was everything, and they wanted — back when you had to win 20 games to keep your job, they wanted to schedule wins, and Denny Crum didn’t do that. Like he wanted to go out and play and find out who they were, and they always wound up getting better as a result of it. So they might get some losses hung on them early, but it was of great benefit.

You know, Tom doesn’t want to lose these games, but when you can play in the Champions Classic, I mean, I know his hand was the first to go up saying, we’ll do it, we’ll play. And I think that’s a — I think we wind up beating up the coaches that don’t do what Tom does instead of celebrating the fact that Tom does them.

You can find more of Bilas’ comments on the upcoming college basketball season here.