We study symmetric nuclear matter using bare nucleon-nucleon (
NN) interactions with the finite particle-number approach within finite cubic boxes. Due to the
NN correlations originating from the bare
NN interaction, two nucleons can be excited to the high-momentum region, leading to the increase of the kinetic energy in nuclear matter. We further consider the spin excitations in the nucleon pairs, where the spins of the two nucleons are changed, and this excitation is important for the tensor correlation. The unitary correlation operator method (UCOM) is used to treat the short-range correlation. The tail correction coming from the neighboring boxes is also included. We demonstrate the contributions of various excitations of nucleon pairs as well as the tail correction to the total energy at normal density. We also discuss the effects of UCOM and correlated nucleon pairs on the density dependence of the total energy. We calculate the equations of state of symmetric nuclear matter using two kinds of the Argonne potentials and the results agree with those from other many-body theories. The density dependences of the Hamiltonian components are also shown.