Michigan State football lands speedy 3-star RB Jaelon Barbarin

When the Michigan State football staff puts its head down and recruits its tail off, momentum is usually generated at a high level.

After losing commitments of Johnathan Slack and Colton Hood over the weekend, the staff got to work on a handful of visiting targets, including Jaelon Barbarin. The speedy three-star running back visited East Lansing over the weekend with a couple of other top targets in the 2023 class and wasted no time making it official.

On Wednesday night, he became the second commitment of the day, committing to Michigan State over Washington State.

The California-based running back is one of the fastest players on Michigan State’s board and he, along with earlier commit Aziah Johnson, bring a ton of speed to East Lansing.

And that’s something that Mel Tucker clearly wanted to address.

The class now sits at 12 commits after landing two 2023 guys on Wednesday and the Spartans are also hoping to flip Sean Brown from Arizona and four-star quarterback Sam Leavitt from Washington State. If they can end the class before early signing day with those four late additions, that would be a monumental win.

Michigan State football is getting hot

We were all down in the dumps after losing two commitments over the weekend, but the additions of Johnson and Barbarin somewhat make up for that.

These aren’t the highest-rated guys, ranking somewhere in the 1,000 range nationally, but they’re mid-ranged three-star prospects who could carve out nice roles at MSU.

Plus, have I mentioned speed? They bring endless amounts of it to the table and while the staff is still going after Kedrick Reescano, Barbarin would be a heck of a change-of-pace back and a guy who could potentially excel on special teams as well.