MINNEAPOLIS – In less than a week, Jeremy Fears Jr. went from Aaron Craft to Grayson Allen – from a plucky pest to a potential problem.
That’s something Michigan State basketball cannot afford. Not when coach Tom Izzo has said all season – and then again after losing Wednesday, Feb. 4, at Minnesota – that “the margin for error is slim” for his team.
Ultimately, the story wasn’t about another abysmal start, in which the Spartans’ starters combined for just seven of their season-low 21 first-half points. Or the way they roared back in the second half yet again, cutting a 16-point deficit to two with inside 20 seconds remaining. No. 10 MSU couldn’t overcome the hole created by its porous defense and the Gophers’ sizzling shooting in a second straight loss, 76-73 at Williams Arena.
It wasn’t even the 10 points and 11 assists from Fears, the reigning back-to-back Big Ten Player of the Week. Instead, it was what he did with his legs and arms – and not the basketball. And it left Izzo threatening to bench his starting point guard, a third-year sophomore and emotional leader who missed all but 10 games of his freshman season in 2023-24.while recovering from being shot in the upper left thigh in December 2023.
“I go out every game, and I play hard. I don’t intentionally try to hurt anyone or play whatever you want to say,” Fears said Wednesday, after being publicly accused Monday of making “dangerous” plays by Michigan coach Dusty May. “I go out and play every game like it’s my last. So I don’t take a game for granted, I don’t take a moment for granted. So I’m gonna go out there and play as hard as I can every possession, every game.
“It is what it is. At one point, I had basketball taken away from me. It’s something I love to do, I couldn’t do it for a whole year. Most people wouldn’t understand that, and you know, that’s on them, I guess. At the end of the day, I don’t change who I am or what I do. I just go out there and play 150[%], no matter what happens.”
Izzo benched Fears twice in the second half Wednesday following controversial plays. And he assailed how his captain handled himself at times, with an emphasis on May’s comments.
“I sat him for a while. I don’t know. I don’t even know if I’m gonna start him the next game,” Izzo said. “But I stuck up for him, too. Because what happened in the last game – I’ll just say, what happened in the last game, the way that was handled, was poorly, too. And that starts everything.
“But Jeremy’s gotta grow up a little bit.”
Changing opinions
The tightrope for Fears is narrow between being an agitator who plays ferocious defense while standing fearlessly, as Craft did for Ohio State, and being labeled “dirty,” as Allen was for Duke. In two games, the narrative around Fears has started to shift from being a tough-as-nails trash-talker who draws fouls at an elite rate to a player who, if you get under his skin, will react negatively and put opponents – and his own team − in jeopardy.
Wednesday night was a prime example of that book becoming widely read by opposing coaches, particularly in light of May’s allegations and social media-circulated video clips highlighting moments from the Spartans’ loss to No. 2 U-M on Friday.
Fears, the 6-foot-2, 190-pound third-year sophomore, received a technical foul with 13:28 to play in the second half for a back kick that connected with the groin of Minnesota’s Langston Reynolds, who initially was called for a foul for a hard bump of the MSU point guard. The Gophers’ bench signaled for a review, and Fears received a tech. Izzo benched Fears for the next 1:44, replacing him with Denham Wojcik because backup point guard Divine Ugochukwu injured his left foot in the first half and did not return.
Before that call, the Spartans (19-4, 9-3 Big Ten) had shaken off a brutal first half to cut a 12-point deficit to five. Minnesota then scored four straight to spark a 22-11 run that gave first-year coach Niko Medved’s team a 67-51 lead on Reynolds’ three-point play with 4:08 to play.
“I’ll say this: He’s taken a lot of heat and all that. He’s a great player,” Medved said of Fears. “Coach (Armon) Gates on our staff coached his brother, knows the family. I know he’s a great kid. He’s a competitor, that’s who he is. Yeah, he gets a little carried away, and we saw that on film. …
“He’s a guy you’d love to have on your team. But you can’t do what he did, and I guarantee you he knows that. But he’s a great player.”
Izzo said after the game he had yet to see a replay of the play but felt Fears “got pushed” and wanted to know “if he hit somebody.” When told video confirmed Fears’ leg made contact, Izzo quickly responded: “It does hit him? Then he deserved it. Then it was a good call. I didn’t see that.”
He continued by calling Fears’ response “immaturity.”
“You know what? If he plays that way, he deserves it. OK. He ain’t gonna play that way if I bench him the next game,” Izzo said. “Now, he is a physical player. So is No. 6 [Reynolds], so is No. 5 [Jaylen Crocker-Johnson]. You know, they’re physical players. And I think things got blown up in the last game that when that stuff goes public, then you gotta really deal with it. If that’s private between a coach and a coach or the front office. But once it goes to [the media], then it gets blown up, blown up.
“If he deserves it, good for him. You know, I’ve had it with that, too. That’s not what I teach. That’s not what I coach. I’ve told him about it.”
Asked if he feels opponents are trying to “bait” him into foolish fouls, as he has done the other way, Fears said, “No, not necessarily.”
“You see different stuff, people see different stuff, call different things,” he said. “At the same time, you just gotta play ball.”
Other incidents
But that wasn’t the only instance of Fears’ physical play progressing into risky reactions.
Just before the technical, with about 14:15 remaining, Fears drove to the basket and was knocked to the ground attempting a layup in traffic. As he landed, he appeared to swipe his leg toward Reynolds’ feet while laying on the ground. He was accused of attempting to trip the Wolverines’ Yaxel Lendeborg during Friday’s 83-71 U-M win in East Lansing, part of May’s criticism. Fears also had an intentional foul in that loss.
With 4:42 to play, Reynolds drove to the basket around MSU freshman Jordan Scott. Fears closed from the corner and whacked the Gopher across the head well after the ball went by him. Scott got whistled for that foul, and no replay took place even though Reynolds immediately attempted to signal for one for contact to the head.
Izzo again pulled Fears for Wojcik, and he did not reinsert him until 1:50 remained and MSU trailed, 69-56.
“His importance is crucial to our team,” senior Jaxon Kohler said of Fears. “He’s the head of our team. And coach has a saying, ‘When the head dies, the body dies, too.’ I need to do a better job of keeping his head up. I think there are some times where it’s a tough situation on calls or whatever, we need to do a better job of keeping his head up.”
When Fears returned, MSU had already started its comeback. Coen Carr, called for an offensive foul on an inadvertent elbow to Crocker-Jackson’s face with 6:45 to play, erupted with 13 of his 14 points in the final 6:09. Scott drained a 3-pointer, and Trey Fort hit two more. His fourth of the game came with 19.6 seconds remaining as the Spartans found themselves down a basket, 73-71, thanks to the 15-4 burst after Fears’ return to the lineup.
But in between, Fears twice found himself in controversial moments seconds aprt. He received a delay-of-game warning with 34.5 seconds left for grabbing the ball out of bounds from a Minnesota player after Carr’s layup. Then after the ensuing inbounds pass, Fears again delivered a hard shot to Reynolds’ midsection in front of MSU’s bench with 30 seconds left. A foul was called across the court on Cam Ward for hitting Asuma trying to deflect the pass. Reynolds, who had just passed the ball cross-court to his teammate, grabbed his chest and tumbled into Izzo on the elevated sideline.
“He’s got a quick wit,” Izzo said of Fears. “But tonight, I did not think he played that way at all.”
‘That’s Jeremy’s fault’
Though Izzo said he felt the referees did a good job of not letting May’s comments from earlier in the week affect how they called the game, Fears said he felt more attention was being paid to him.
“Oh, for sure. And that’s usually what happens when you make a big deal out about something, obviously,” said Fears, who went 4-for-11 and missed all three of his 3-point attempts. “That’s kind of what, going forward, I kind of expect it. But at the same time, the only thing you can do is just play ball. You can’t really control all that extra stuff, but it is what it is.”
Izzo took it further, again bringing up his displeasure with May’s comments and how it could affect Fears’ reputation the rest of the season.
“Well, when somebody comes out and publicly comes out and says something about a guy, that sometimes happens,” he said of Minnesota potentially goading Fears by getting under his skin. “But that’s Jeremy’s fault. … So are [opponents]) baiting him? Well, of course. Of course. When you go public with something, you should get baited. And it’s his fault. And I make no bones about it.”
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Tom Izzo threatens to bench MSU star Jeremy Fears Jr. for ‘immaturity’
Reporting by Chris Solari, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
