Michigan State basketball reportedly had Zoom call with potential backup PG

Losing Tre Holloman to Will Wade and NC State was a big blow to Michigan State basketball's offseason plans, but Tom Izzo isn't done working on next season's roster.

After landing Trey Fort and Kaleb Glenn, the Spartans seem to be one guard away from truly competing for a second straight Big Ten title. The idea of Jase Richardson coming back is likely a pipe dream which means that the Spartans will have to look elsewhere.

There's the international route that we've seen Big Ten teams like Purdue and Illinois utilize to find talent or there's the transfer portal which every team has grown accustomed to.

It sounds like both may be in play.

But one of the current transfer targets to play that backup point guard role has revealed himself in recent days and, according to him, he just had a Zoom call with Tom Izzo and Michigan State on Sunday night.

I know what the early sentiments are regarding Divine Ugochukwu and they're not positive. Why would Izzo target a guard who can't shoot and who only averaged just over five points per game for one of the worst teams in major college basketball? It's because he probably sees the upside in Ugochukwu.

Izzo likely sees a guy with three years of eligibility left who stuck it out at Miami this past season despite losing the head coach that he committed to and he still played 20-plus minutes per game.

Also, his poor 3-point shooting is in a small sample size and there's room for improvement there. He shot just 17 percent from deep on 35 attempts. Ideally, that number will need to be closer to 30-35 percent if Michigan State is going to squeeze everything they can out of him.

Plus, he can run the point. That's the most important aspect here.

We'll see just how far this recruitment goes, but it sounds like Michigan State is at least making an effort here and it'll have to fight off USC and home-state Texas Tech.