Jeremy Fears Jr. has been a revelation for Michigan State this season.
The redshirt freshman point guard missed the second half of his first year in East Lansing because he was unfortunately shot in the leg last December while back at home in Illinois. He has worked hard to recover and he's lucky to be able to play the sport he loves still, narrowly avoiding a career-ending injury.
Now that he's back on the floor and playing at a high level, Michigan State is excelling. With excellent point guard play, the Spartans look unbeatable, sitting at 14-2 on the season and 5-0 in the Big Ten.
While he's not going to drop 20 points a night (at least not right now), Fears is averaging a solid 7.9 points to go along with 6.4 assists which happens to be the 15th-best number in the nation.
On top of that, he's only averaging 2.0 turnovers per game which puts him on track to finish with a better assist-to-turnover rate than some Spartan legends, including Cassius Winston.
His assist-to-turnover rate is one of the best in the country and it even has some hoops analytics guys crunching numbers to prove that he's one of the nation's top playmakers.
In fact, Evan Miya, a respected analytics expert, rated him as the fourth-best playmaker in college basketball so far this season.
#MichiganState redshirt freshman PG Jeremy Fears Jr with the nation’s 4th-highest playmaking score, per @EvanMiya metrics: pic.twitter.com/HA02YuNgv4
— SpartanTailgate.com (@SpartanTailgate) January 14, 2025
Purdue's Braden Smith has the highest playmaking score which is calculated from predicted assist rate and turnover percentage against an average opponent. Smith has a score of 24.3 which is a healthy lead over the next-closest guy, but Fears is at 20.6 which makes him the fourth-best playmaker in college basketball.
Are we surprised? Not at all, especially given how well he's been playing in recent weeks. After a decent start to the season, Fears is turning up his level of play lately.
Over the past five games, Fears is averaging 9.2 points per game but also 7.8 assists per game, including his first career double-double against Washington. He's scoring at a decent rate but he's also creating for his teammates and running an elite fast break.
Don't look now, but Fears is bordering on elite point guard status.