Jeremy Fears leads nation in another impressive stat, proving he’s an All-American

If the Naismith Award was for the “most valuable” college basketball player instead of just the most outstanding, it would almost certainly have to go to Jeremy Fears.

OK, so Fears is also outstanding, but he’s arguably the most valuable player in college basketball.

Don’t believe me? The numbers back it up.

CBB Analytics on Twitter shared an impressive stat that Fears leads the nation in, and it’s not just assists. The sophomore point guard leads all college basketball players in “points created” this season.

There’s some elite talent near the top of that list like Christian Anderson, Braden Smith, Darius Acuff, PJ Haggerty, AJ Dybansta, and Cameron Boozer, and Fears tops them all.

What exactly does this mean? It means that Fears has his hand in more scoring plays than anyone else in the country. He’s scored or assisted on 978 points this season, and if I had it my way, I’d count the free throws that come from would-be Fears assists that have resulted in fouls. That’s a rule that I wouldn’t mind seeing change one day (maybe my most controversial rule opinion).

Still, this means that Fears has assisted or scored on nearly 50 percent of Michigan State’s buckets this season. If you remove free throws, that means that Fears has had a helping hand in 59.7% of Michigan State’s field goal makes this year. That’s just an insane number.

That’s an All-American number.

Jeremy Fears is an obvious All-American selection

All-American selections don’t get more obvious than Jeremy Fears. The sophomore point guard leads college basketball in assists per game and he’s close to breaking the Big Ten’s single-season assists record. He currently has 241 on the season and Braden Smith’s record is 313.

Michigan State has five regular season games left and at least two postseason games, so if he maintains his current 9.3 average, he’ll break the record.

Fears is also just 50 assists away from tying Cassius Winston’s Michigan State record.

Not only is he an elite passers, but he’s an elite defender and he scores 15.1 points per game. There aren’t often point guards that are this productive and not limited to one side of the floor. Fears is playing at an All-American level and I don’t think there’s any doubt he should be a first-teamer.