While Friday night’s Michigan State basketball game wasn’t exactly one that fans wants to remember, it was a record-breaking night for the Spartans’ best player.
With Jeremy Fears Jr. recording 13 assists, he passed Cassius Winston for the most in a single season in Michigan State history. The record was broken by Winston during the 2018-19 season when he finished with 291 and he overtook Mateen Cleaves as the program’s and Big Ten’s all-time leading assist man.
There’s a new assists king in East Lansing, at least for a single season, as Fears is now up to 294 on the season and he’s now just 20 away from breaking Braden Smith’s Big Ten record (313).
Michigan State will likely need to make it to at least the Sweet 16 if Fears is going to break that single-season record or at least make it further than Purdue.
The Spartans are going to need Fears to be on his game for the next few weeks if Michigan State wants to piece together a run that was longer than last year’s.
Michigan State is going to be just fine
It was disappointing to see the Spartans fall in their first Big Ten Tournament game, but I think we saw way too many overreactions from the fanbase on Friday night. As long as Fears stays healthy, this team can beat just about anyone.
The Spartans also showed that they can hang with Michigan and Duke who are considered the top two teams in the country. Michigan State led all three matchups (two vs. Michigan and one vs. Duke) late in the second half before coughing up those leads. This team can hang with and beat anyone if it could just find a way to close.
They need to dig deep and find that killer instinct.
Fears needs to take control and be “meaner” as Izzo requested. If he can grow into that Mateen-like point guard in the NCAA Tournament, Michigan State could cut down some nets.
There were a lot of concerning moments from the UCLA loss, but Izzo didn’t earn the nickname “Mr. March” for no reason.