While Adam Nightingale is quietly building a team of monsters across the street at Munn Ice Arena, Tom Izzo is doing the same inside the Breslin Center.
The Spartans are loaded with talent for a third straight season, but this team might just be Izzo’s most complete in a decade. They really feel like they have a little of everything and they’re going to do it all well. This team will have rebounders, size, shot-blockers, shooters, slashers, passers, and high IQ individuals throughout its roster.
It will also apparently have three preseason Wooden Award candidates, including the favorite.
DraftKings posted its early odds to win the 2026-27 Wooden Award and three Spartans appeared on the list of 100 college basketball standouts.
- Jeremy Fears Jr. (+850)
- Coen Carr (+6000)
- Jasiah Jervis (+13000)
Two Spartans are currently top 32 in the country in Wooden Award odds and Fears acually leads everyone. Jervis was a pleasant surprise near the bottom of that top 100.
No Spartan has ever won the coveted award given to the nation’s top player, but Fears could change that this season.
This Michigan State team feels different
For the first time in about seven years, it feels like Michigan State could legitimately win a national title and give Izzo No. 2 after decades of waiting. The Spartans return just about everyone from a 27-8 team that finished fourth in a loaded Big Ten last season and was a couple bounces away from a second straight Elite Eight.
Fears was the final piece of the puzzle and Michigan State fans had to wait until the final day to withdraw from the NBA draft to hear about his return. Coen Carr, Jordan Scott, Kaleb Glenn (missed 2025-26 with an injury), Jesse McCulloch, Cam Ward, and Kur Teng are all returning to the loaded roster which also brings in a top-five recruiting class as well as 7-foot-2 transfer center Anton Bonke.
The only players who saw meaningful action last season who are gone are Divine Ugochukwu, Trey Fort, Carson Cooper, and Jaxon Kohler, and I think you could argue that the roster is much better this year.
An All-American point guard who’s been compared to Mateen Cleaves and who’s the Wooden Award favorite, a freakishly bouncy forward who is adding a jumper to his game, a talented two-man sophomore class which is about to break out, two 7-foot-2 centers, a returning transfer who missed all of last year but who figures to be a scoring weapon, and a top-five incoming recruiting class.
This team is different.
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