Jeremy Fears Jr. has stolen college basketball headlines for all the wrong reasons this season. His dust-ups with Michigan and the accusations of dirty play that followed have earned him a Grayson Allen-like reputation in the sport. However, that narrative, as it did with Allen at Duke and has with Michigan State alum Draymond Green throughout his NBA career, has distracted from just how good Fears has been.
On Tuesday, Fears was named a second-team All-American, and the redshirt sophomore point guard enters the tournament averaging 15.7 points and 9.2 assists with 45/32/89 shooting splits. He’s been hyper-efficient and is arguably the best passer in the entire country.
If that’s what he puts on display on Thursday against North Dakota State in the first round and then on Saturday against either UCLA or UCF in the Round of 32, then he’ll completely flip the narrative on his season and remind the college basketball casuals that he’s one of the best players in the country.
Jeremy Fears Jr. will remind everyone that he’s the best passer in the country
Michigan State has a tough path to the Final Four, which would be Tom Izzo’s eighth trip as the head coach of the Spartans. And to navigate it, Fears must lead the way. He’s the engine for the Michigan State offense, which is otherwise devoid of individual shot-makers.
Fears is the only player on the team who averages more unassisted field goals made per game than assisted, and Jaxon Kohler and Carson Cooper are the only other two players on the team who average more than five unassisted points per game. While Fears’ usage rate isn’t astronomically high, that’s a staggering reliance on one player's playmaking, especially when that player is just 6-foot-2. By offensive win shares, Fears is fifth in the country behind Cameron Boozer, Bruce Thornton, Darius Acuff Jr., and Keaton Wagler (according to CBBanalytics.com).
Yet, despite all of that responsibility, Fears is essentially in a league of his own when it comes to his ability to protect the ball. He’s first in the country, by a wide margin, in assist rate and sixth by assist-to-usage ratio, and he’s one of four players in the country with an assist-to-turnover ratio better than 4.0 with a usage rate over 20 percent.
Arkansas’s Acuff was the lone point guard on the All-American first-team, while Fears was joined on the second-team by Purdue’s Braden Smith and Illinois’s Wagler. While Acuff deserved the first-team spot and is a superior scorer to Fears, there’s an argument that Fears is the best ‘true’ or ‘old school’ point guard in the country. But right now, he’s not talked about that way. A few good games in the NCAA Tournament, without anymore, let’s just say incidents, and he will finally be.