I don't think anyone has any real idea how good Michigan State is this season. The Spartans, perhaps, made progress on Sunday with a home win over hated rival Michigan. It's now five straight wins for Sparty vs. the Wolverines.

MSU won 70-62, forced Michigan into more turnovers than made field goals in the second half, got 15 points and 13 boards from freshman Miles Bridges, plus a game-high 16 points from freshman point guard Cassius Winston.

The Spartans had 33 points off the bench, outscored Michigan 34-20 in the paint and kept Michigan scoreless from the field in the final six minutes.

Oddly enough, freshman Nick Ward was good -- as usual -- but not factored into the offense enough. Ward was 6-of-6 from the field, had 13 points, and Michigan was clearly flustered by his ability on offense.

Bridges is the marquee man for MSU, but Ward is the most efficient player Tom Izzo has this season. Would love to see him more involved, even if he's a liability on defense in many instances.

For the most part, Sunday was good news for Izzo's team, which snapped a three-game losing streak. MSU is 13-9 with a 5-4 Big Ten record. The win is nice, but if it amounts to anything down the road is still to be determined.

I mean, how good is Michigan? The Wolverines are 14-8 with a 4-5 league record and don't qualify as a top-35 team by any metric. The middle of the Big Ten features nine teams with four to six losses. We're almost halfway through league play and it's still impossible to sort out the conference.

That's why Michigan State's far from a sure thing, even if the Big Ten is down this season. Here's MSU's upcoming schedule.

@ Nebraska (Feb. 2)
@ Michigan (Feb. 7)
vs. Iowa (Feb. 11)
vs. Ohio State (Feb. 14)
@ Purdue (Feb. 18)

Three of the next five on the road, and if you look at the remaining regular-season slate, MSU has more road games (five) than home games (four) left. Sparty is projected by KenPom to go 9-9 in the conference and have a 17-14 overall record. That will not be nearly enough to warrant inclusion to the NCAAs. At that mark, MSU would likely need to break into the Big Ten title game to have a somewhat comfortable at-large case.

The conference is coagulated, though. There is no real pecking order. Wisconsin barely beat Rutgers in OT at Madison Square Garden on Saturday. Maryland is looking damn good, yet predictive models still rank a 19-2 Terps team well outside of the top 30. Will that come to pass? Is Maryland due for a losing streak?

Either way, MSU needed this win badly. It got it, and now it gets two road games, both of them imperative to staying on the bubble. It's weird heading into February and discussing Michigan State in these terms, but here we are. The team is hindered by injuries, but has still managed to be entertainingly flawed for most of the season.