Miles Bridges is doing it all for Michigan State, but that's a problem for the Spartans

Even if you're just a casual-but-interested college basketball fan, if you've made an effort to watch hoops through the first three weeks of the season, you've probably seen Michigan State multiple times. The Spartans have played in high-profile games against Arizona, Kentucky, Baylor, Wichita State and Duke.

The results have been inconsistent and atypical to what we usually see from MSU in November.

A thin front court, an unreal and unjust travel schedule to start the season and a team featuring four freshmen who are taking on a huge load has led to MSU starting 4-4. It's the poorest start for the Spartans in 13 years. In 2003-04, MSU began 3-4, and actually hit 5-7 before finishing 18-12. Due to MSU's RPI numbers and extremely high strength of schedule that year, it made the NCAA Tournament.

The same could happen again for Tom Izzo.

But if MSU is going to gather itself, it can't keep relying on its best player, Miles Bridges, to be its primary option on offense. Bridges is looking like a surefire lottery pick, someone I can't help but watch at all times. He doesn't rebound; he swoops. He doesn't block shots; he flares.

Check this late-game putback for the final two of the 11 points Bridges scored in MSU's 78-69 loss to Duke on Tuesday night:

Yeah, there's a "wow." A "Hey-where-the-hell-did-he-come-from" type of play. Be it on offense or defense, Bridges is averaging, by my dependable calculations, 3.87 of these per game. And we haven't even hit December.

Still, he's got plenty of room to go and grow with his game. His athleticism and dynamism on both ends of the floor lead to a lot of really great plays -- but they're also no doubt exhausting. And Bridges isn't a go-to long-distance shooter yet. He leads Sparty in scoring (16.6) and rebounds (8.8), but it's clear the team hasn't quite figured out how to get the most out of Bridges while still allowing others to grease the offense.

Yes, he can do this against the bad teams:

And even against the good ones. Here he is against Kentucky, crossing up a future NBA pick in Wenyen Gabriel and getting to the rim with smoothness and conviction:

But Bridges needs help. The offense cannot and should not run through him, but I can't help but wonder if there is no real secondary option for Tom Izzo right now. To me, Bridges works best playing as 1B, not a true No. 1 guy. Who can and will be that 1A for MSU? It should be Eron Harris. The 23-year-old fifth-year senior has a 12.9 points per game clip and has not been steady throughout. He was expected to lead the team in scoring this season and did have a team-high 14 points vs. Duke and maybe, eventually, he does. Funneling everything through Bridges and asking the freshman to log north of 33 minutes per game could wind up backfiring.

Harris putting in effort on both ends and finding his stroke is as important to MSU's success as anything, including forward Gavin Schilling's undetermined return to the lineup.

Izzo knows this. And there are good signs elsewhere. Nick Ward, a freshman power forward who's taking on a massive load, has been very good so far. Josh Langford and Cassius Winston, also first-year players, are coming along well. But thankfully for MSU, the worst part of the schedule is over. The Spartans will basically drift off the national radar until mid-January. They get five straight home games against mid-major competition, and the early part of the Big Ten schedule showcases Minnesota twice, Northwestern, Rutgers and Penn State. If MSU goes from 4-4 to 14-4 it wouldn't be a shock.

If it drops a few? First off, that's on the table, absolutely. And if it goes that way, look to MSU's lack of pressure defense (it ranks 345th out of 351 teams in turnover defense) and Bridges possibly hitting a wall due to scouting reports revolving around him. From the moment we learned in the preseason about Michigan State's injuries, we knew this team would be shaped different from any other team Izzo's had.

The question is: Will this be a circular problem for MSU? Having Bridges on the floor brings vitality, but it's ultimately a hindrance to Michigan State's big-picture goals to have him be the focal point. Harris, Langford, even 3-point specialist Matt McQuaid, all of them will need to sharpen up in December in order to get the most effective play out of Bridges and vault MSU back into the ranks of college basketball's top 25 teams.