EAST LANSING — King Rice played point guard for a coaching icon. Which makes Monmouth’s coach uniquely qualified to give a one-game analysis of Michigan State basketball’s Jeremy Fears Jr.
Unprompted, Rice vociferously let his appreciation of Fears be heard Monday night at Breslin Center.
It didn’t matter that, without context, the redshirt freshman’s stat line in the Spartans’ 81-57 season-opening victory didn’t jump off the page: three points, eight assists, two turnovers, three fouls in 22 minutes. Rice marveled at the nuance he saw beyond Fears’ numbers.
“I take my hat off to people who are really good point guards — not guys that score, too, and can do the Russell Westbrook, but a kid that just comes in and runs the team,” Rice said. “And I watched him warm up, because I was intrigued with him, (me) being a point guard. And I watched him warm up, he practices all those passes, OK? Everybody’s out there shooting jumpers, doing all kinds of other stuff, and he’s practicing every one of those passes he threw tonight. And in warmups.”
Rice also left out one important facet: Fears was doing all of that in his first official game back at Breslin, nearly 10 months after he took a bullet in his upper left leg that some feared might end his college basketball career.
It was an important caveat MSU coach Tom Izzo made sure to mention Tuesday, with the Spartans preparing for their second nonconference game Thursday night against Niagara (8 p.m., BTN+). An important return for his most important player at the most important position in his program.
“It’s really unbelievable,” Izzo said. “I mean, there were some people, doctors, that were talking about would he ever come back to that. You can still see, every once in a while, he’s not quite as explosive, but it’s very seldom. He’s making progress. Now, it’s making up for the year that he missed. And that’s gonna take a little bit of time.”
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In his first collegiate start, Fears quickly showed the December gunshot wound he suffered no longer was an issue with how he ran MSU’s fastbreak, defended at a stingy level on the perimeter and operated the Spartans’ offense in pass-first mode.
Seconds after beginning his return Monday with an alley-oop assist to Jaden Akins off the opening tip, Fears flashed how far he has come physically on his only basket of the game. The 6-foot-2, 190-pound former four-star recruit caught a pass on the left wing with the shot clock winding down, blew through two initial Monmouth defenders at the free-throw line with a sizzling first step and finished at the rim, leaving two other Hawks flat-footed.
“Just a good way to start the game off and be relieved,” Fears said after practice Tuesday.
From there, Fears became a distributor and orchestrator. He provided the type of fiery leadership at both ends of the floor that Izzo demands from his on-court extension. That symbiotic relationship left a strong impression on Rice, who played four years for Dean Smith and led North Carolina to a Final Four as a senior in 1991.
“I’ve watched Michigan State,” said Rice, in his 14th season as Monmouth’s head coach. “I never got to play against them when I was at Carolina, we didn’t play them. But I have some favorites. I’m a big Mateen Cleaves guy, because I watched that young man. He was a point guard that — like the one they have now (Fears) — where everybody says, ‘Well, he doesn’t do this and he doesn’t do that.’ But he wins, OK?
“My friend (Cincinnati coach) Wes Miller told me that this young man that you have running the point for you, he said, ‘King, he’s just such a winner. It doesn’t matter if he shoots or not.’ I was a point guard that didn’t take a lot of shots, and we won a lot of games. And Coach Smith convinced me just to be the one to get everybody else the ball, and that helped me be a better player.”
Fears averaged 3.5 points, 3.3 assists and 1.9 rebounds with 10 steals over 15.3 minutes in MSU’s first 12 games last season before being shot Dec. 23 in his hometown of Joliet, Illinois. The NCAA granted him a redshirt in the summer, and he was back running the Spartans’ offense in time for their three-game trip to Spain in August.
“Spain was definitely a reliever, just being able to get out there and play with the team, mesh together, get used to them,” Fears said. “And then the exhibition has helped a lot, going to Northern and playing at home against Ferris. So just overall, being able to play together — now, it’s not even like a first game. It really felt like Game 6 or 7 for me.”
Fears said he has talked extensively with Cleaves, who headed MSU’s 2000 national championship, and Tum Tum Nairn, now the top assistant at Bowling Green, about how to grow as a leader. Izzo thought enough of Fears’ toughness and leadership that he gave him the keys to the offense even before three-year starting point guard A.J. Hoggard transferred to Vanderbilt for his final season of eligibility.
“And I talk to Coach,” Fears said. “Coach is a great leader, and he helps me. I go in this office, we talk, we sit down, and he just gives me points and things and ways I can help everyone everyone else.”
Izzo said Fears’ lateral quickness defensively continues to improve, and the Hall of Fame coach believes the shooting and scoring will follow. During his recovery, Fears got a number of tattoos on his lower right leg, including a butterfly on his knee. It was to signify a major change in surviving the shooting, but it also points to the hope for his own basketball future taking flight again.
“It’s something that, who knows, I didn’t know if I was gonna be able to play basketball again,” he said. “So just (going through) a big change in my life, and I’m back healthy, I’m shining. And I just keep trying to get better.”
Contact Chris Solari:csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.
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