Allen leaves MSU... BFD? IDK.

Well, immediately after Chris Allen got booted from the team, the Only Colors and this guy's thoughts about it seemed to be "it's an unfortunate situation, but it'll be good for chemistry." Indeed, he appears to be the first Spartan ever to get the boot from Izzo, a shocking fact in and of itself. So, it's possible that this loss will be an addition through subtraction, I suppose.

However, Allen seemed to play well in the tournament, especially in terms of giving the Spartans some consistent perimeter defense that Korie Lucious and Durrell Summers (or for that matter, Kalin Lucas when he's healthy) don't always seem that interested in. Furthermore, Allen rediscovered his three-point stroke last season, shooting .398 on 133 attempts. No other Spartan was anywhere near that good, and of the returnees only Lucas (.354) and Summers (.358) will cause concern for opposing offenses.

In my way-too-early pre-season rankings, I've been very high on the Spartans. Allen's loss will hurt their rankings- losing an experienced senior with some size and very good offensive rating will do that. Will cost them championships (conference and/or NCAA) or another Final Four berth? I couldn't possibly guess. But here's what I would say to keep an eye on:

1) The freshmen- I've seen a lot of talk along the lines of "McDonald's All-American Keith Appling has to produce immediately." And so it should be- if you're playing in the McDonald's All-American game, you should generally expect to be starting wherever you're playing the next fall. However, freshmen guards tend to also bring turnovers with them, and that's one thing that Izzo doesn't need. Russell Byrd was a very highly ranked 6-7 shooting guard as well that people seem to have forgotten about since he broke his foot last May. With Allen gone, and Byrd coming in with a reputation as a sniper, we may see Byrd getting a lot of minutes, especially if Summers can defend shooting guards.

2) Durell Summers- if Summers really focuses, he has the athletic ability to be a very good defender. He's already a pretty decent shooter, so perhaps Izzo can just have him can pick up where Allen left off. Still, someone else, probably Appling, needs to pick up Summer's role capably.

3) Korie Lucious- if Izzo starts utilizing Lucious more to free up Lucas for shots (the memorable end to the Michigan game comes to mind, where you could tell the wolverines knew what was coming but just were unable to stop Lucas from getting free long enough to hit the game-winning shot), then perhaps it's not such a bad trade-off in the end. MSU might be able to simply out-score opponents in a series of high-octane games. However, I'm sure Izzo is still rather fond of defense, so I imagine this is the last option.

Anyway, it all may be fine. As we can see, Izzo has some options. However, there's now more questions about the team, so we'll need to see some answers before we can consider MSU the 2011 title favorite for the conference or the country.