One of Michigan State’s most productive running backs and one of Tom Izzo’s most underrated point guards will get their Hall-of-Fame nods this fall.

Michigan State announced a seven-member 2026 class for the Athletics Hall of Fame on Thursday. The group includes football players Tico Duckett and Dan Currie; basketball players Kalin Lucas and Lindsay Bowen; and cross country and track coach Walt Drenth, as well as runners Sue Latter-Addison and Leah O’Connor-Falland.

The induction ceremony will be Friday, Sept. 11, at the Clara Bell Smith Center, and honorees also will be celebrated at Michigan State’s home football game against Eastern Michigan on Sept. 12.

As a redshirt sophomore, Duckett canonized himself in Michigan State lore with the winning touchdown to knock off No. 1 Michigan, 28-27, in 1990 — a nine-yard rush with less than two minutes on the clock to stun the Wolverines in Ann Arbor. That may be genetic. His younger brother, T.J., made a rivalry play of his own in 2001 with a last-second winning touchdown catch from quarterback Jeff Smoker in 2001’s “Clockgate” game. T.J. also is a member of the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame.

A Kalamazoo native and product of Loy-Norrix High School, Duckett rushed for 1,394 yards and 10 touchdowns that season to start a streak of three straight 1,000-yard rushing years. Michigan State earned a piece of the Big Ten championship in 1990, and Duckett was the Big Ten’s offensive player of the year. He also ran track.

Duckett’s 4,212 career yards rank third in program history, behind Lorenzo White at 4,513 and Javon Ringer at 4,398. White was an inspiration for successor Duckett, who wore the same throwback shoulder pads.

“I’ve always tried to make sure that I lived up to the Lorenzo White standard,” Duckett said in a statement. “And that continues today, as I know that he had a heck of a speech during his MSU Hall of Fame induction.”

When it comes to the hardwood, Mateen Cleaves and Cassius Winston soak up a lot of the lore among Izzo point guards, but among the standard-setters there ranks Lucas (2007-11), a Detroit native who led Michigan State to Final Fours in 2009 and 2010.

Lucas earned Big Ten player of the year in 2009, leading Michigan State to the national-championship game, where the Spartans lost to North Carolina at Ford Field. Lucas was a three-time All-Big Ten selection, twice first-team. A torn Achilles in the second round of the NCAA Tournament in 2010 forced him to watch as Michigan State lost in the Final Four. He returned for his senior year, then his pro career took him to seven different countries, including two NBA games for Memphis and Detroit.

At 1,996 career points, Lucas ranks fifth in scoring at Michigan State. He ranks 10th in program history with 558 assists.

“What’s really big for me is just knowing the people that came before me,” Lucas said in a press release. “I knew coming to Michigan State wasn’t going to be an easy task, especially having some of the greatest point guards to ever play the game come before me, from Magic (Johnson) to Scott Skiles and Mateen Cleaves. It just goes on and on. So, me knowing that, I knew I had to come here and represent. For them, for myself, and for my family. And for sure, you got to win. If you want to put that jersey on, winning has to come with it.”

Currie, another Detroiter who graduated from St. Anthony High School, lettered three times for Duffy Daugherty from 1955-57. In those bookending years, Michigan State claims national championships, and in 1955 the Spartans beat UCLA in the Rose Bowl, 17-14, for the second time in school history. Currie played center, and in 1957 he was named first-team All-American and the Spartans’ team MVP. 

Currie also captained the defense as a linebacker in an era when two-way players were common. It’s in that role that he played nine years in the NFL, seven for the Green Bay Packers with whom he won NFL championships in 1961 and 1962. He died in 2017 at the age of 82.

Bowen was a part of Michigan State’s best women’s basketball season in school history in 2004-05, when she and the Spartans made the national-championship game, losing to Baylor. It took one of the NCAA’s biggest comebacks to get there, a 16-point deficit with 15 minutes to play against Tennessee in the Final Four erased to tie a then-NCAA record. 

Bowen, a native of Dansville, holds the Michigan State career minutes record at 4,611, ranks fifth in scoring with 1,739 points and formerly held the 3-pointers record with 294.

Drenth, who coached Michigan State’s women’s cross-country program from 2004-20, led his squad to the 2014 national championship, which is Michigan State’s most recent national title in any sport. His Spartans also won Big Ten titles in 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014 and 2019, as well as an outdoor track-and-field title in 2015. In all of those years, Drenth was named Big Ten coach of the year. Drenth is a Charlevoix native.

One of Drenth’s 2014 national championship runners, O’Connor-Falland, is entering the Michigan State Athletics Hall of Fame alongside him. She won two individual NCAA championships with the Spartans, including a record mile time in the 2015 NCAA indoor track-and-field championships. She is the only woman to win the Big Ten’s 3000-meter steeplechase title four straight seasons.

Latter-Addison, a Clarkston native who ran for the Spartans from 1975-78, won two state titles at Michigan’s first high school girls track championship before she came to Michigan State after Title IX legislation led to the Spartans’ own program.

“Dr. Nell Jackson called and said, ‘Hey, we have a track program’ and I changed schools two to three months before coming,” Latter-Addison said in a press release. “It was a different time. There was no recruiting.”

Latter-Addison helped the Spartans win the 1977 Big Ten championship with individual titles in the 440-yard and 880-yard runs and the mile relay. Those were the first of seven career Big Ten titles. She also won the U.S. Track Federation’s 800 run, and set a Michigan State record with her AAU Nationals championship time of 2:03.75.

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This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Michigan State athletics Hall of Fame unveils star-studded 2026 class

Reporting by Connor Earegood, The Detroit News / The Detroit News

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By Connor Earegood, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network