EAST LANSING – Does Michigan State have issues on the road?

It’s January 21 and the Spartans have yet to win a game outside of the state of Michigan: they’re 0-3 in true road games and 1-2 in neutral-site games, with their lone win coming against Baylor at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit.

Yet Tom Izzo doesn’t think the road has been the problem in those losses.

“We’ve got this ‘You haven’t won on the road.’ We haven’t won on the road because we’re not good enough to win on the road,” Izzo said after his team’s last road loss, to Illinois on Jan. 11. “It’s not because of the road.”

Michigan State will likely find out whether that’s true or not during a pair of road games this week, at Maryland on Sunday (noon, CBS) and at No. 11 Wisconsin on Friday.

Michigan State is far from alone in the Big Ten in having a lackluster road record. Through Friday’s games, Big Ten home teams had own 73 percent of conference games, on pace to be the highest figure in decades. That percentage includes the conference’s top teams: Purdue is just 2-2 in road games, and Wisconsin dropped a game at Penn State last week.

The Spartans’ last road loss was by three to a then-top-10 Illinois team. It’s also lost away from home to Duke and Arizona, who are also both ranked. Izzo defended most of those performances as strong, just not strong enough.

“We’re not losing games because we can’t win on the road,” Izzo said. “We’re losing games because we didn’t play well enough on the road. There’s a big difference.”

But if the Spartans are going to rally in the last 13 games of the regular season and make the NCAA Tournament after an 11-7 start, road wins will be necessary.

Maryland started the season 1-4 with losses to Davidson and UAB, but a week ago recorded its best win of the season, on the road at Illinois.

Fifth-year Terrapins guard Jahir Young has averaged 26.5 points per game in his team’s last six games and is coming off of a 36-point performance on Wednesday at Northwestern in a loss.

But Maryland (11-7, 3-4) is also the worst 3-point shooting team in the Big Ten at just 27.9 percent.

Michigan State has won two straight entering the game, over Rutgers and Minnesota – although Izzo lamented after the team’s Minnesota win on Thursday that his team didn’t “progress” in a game that was tied with four minutes left before the Spartans won by 10.

“We didn’t do some things early and that’s disappointing and I will stay disappointed in it and be happy about the win,” Izzo said.

The effort, which included allowing Minnesota to shoot better than 50 percent from the field for much of the game, likely won’t be sufficient when the Spartans head on the road and look to break through.

“I’m going right to work on Maryland which is a big road game that we have next,” Izzo said.