FanPulse: Second-round voting is open

We may not have been able to enjoy watching this year’s Michigan State Spartans kickoff the NCAA Tournament with a win, but because of fans, we can still say it happened.

SB Nation’s FanPulse is allowing college basketball fans to vote for who they think would have won March Madness. Through the first round, fans resoundingly supported MSU. The No. 3 seed Spartans received 94 percent of the vote against No. 14 UC Irvine.

To put in perspective how confident fans across the country are in the Spartans, MSU received a higher percentage of the vote than fellow three-seed Duke and even with the two seed in their bracket, Creighton.

Voting is now open for the second round, where Michigan State will face the Auburn Tigers in what we can all agree should have been last year’s national championship matchup.

Auburn won their match against a play-in between Indiana and Richmond with 64 percent. The Hoosiers took a majority of the remaining votes, and had they not been splitting votes it’s not impossible that there could have been a Big Ten rematch.

Everyone who has signed up FanPulse should already have the survey in their inbox. For those who have yet to sign up, click here to register. Immediately after signing up, fans will be able to vote in the second-round survey.

Here’s the thing, we don’t ever want to say MSU basketball fans couldn’t outperform the likes of Auburn. So make sure to get your vote in before the survey closes Tuesday night. This MSU team was going to make a deep run, and as a fanbase we need to make sure that still happens.

Outside of MSU and Indiana, the Big Ten did about as well as fans would have expected. Illinois, Michigan, Penn State, Wisconsin and Iowa all advanced to the second round, only IU and Rutgers failed to win.