BUFFALO, NY − Heading into the NCAA Tournament, Tom Izzo issued a challenge to Jeremy Fears Jr.
“What I told him in my meetings with him is that he’s gotta learn how to run a team and gather people,” the Hall of Fame coach said. “That’s not as easy as you think.”
And yet, his point guard made it look that way from start to finish in 3-seed Michigan State basketball's 92-67 blowout of 14-seed North Dakota State on Thursday, March 19.
Fears had nine assists at halftime and ultimately finished with 11 while making a clear and concerted effort to elevate the play of his teammates around him the entire game.
From setting up Carson Cooper time and again in the paint to swinging the ball around the perimeter to give Jaxon Kohler 3-point looks. From getting freshman Cam Ward involved early and often in the offense to giving Coen Carr chances to wow the crowd with electrifying dunks.
All while taking just two shots in the first 20 minutes and finishing with only seven points. That broke a streak of 20 straight games in which the third-year sophomore scored in double figures. But it provided perhaps his most galvanizing basketball of an All-American season.
“We’ve seen him [do this] in bits and pieces during the year,” said Cooper, the senior center who tied a career high with 20 points and added 10 rebounds. “I think this was a big game where he showed up for 40 minutes, especially off the start. My message for him was, ‘You play so much harder in the last two minutes of the game than the first two minutes of the game, and we can see that.’ Anybody can see that, the kind of change of tenacity and energy he plays with.
“I was just telling him, ‘Yo, you gotta find a way to dig deep and start off like that. And if you start off like that, it’s gonna change the whole tide of the game.’ And we saw that today, how hard it was for them to try and make a run back.”
The 11th-ranked Spartans (26-7) surged to a 20-point halftime lead and extended it to as many as 28 after halftime. Carr finished with 17 points, and Kohler scored 12, including three 3-pointers. Ward added 13 as MSU also got 30 points from its bench.
All with Fears – who was named a second-team All-American by The Associated Press after earning first-team All-Big Ten honors – serving as the catalyst. All with the 6-foot-2, 185-pound leading scorer of the team drawing multiple defenders the entire game.
“There were times where I saw three people on Fears, and he was able to make the right decision at the right moment,” Kohler said. “Honestly, I imagine it’s frustrating having three guys on you. But that just show you the respect that people have for you. I mean, he’s an All-American. But the way he was able to find people at the right time and give them assists, it’s incredible, to be honest. And to see the whole court and know where guys are through three defenders at times?
“It just speaks to how special of a player he is.”
Fears also had four of MSU’s 12 turnovers against the pressure from NDSU. But he also did so because he kept the Spartans’ transition tempo going against the guard-oriented Bison, guiding them to 15 fastbreak points and helping to generate six steals among the 12 NDSU turnovers.
“We tweaked some ball screen coverages immediately going into the game and tried to do some things to slow down Fears differently than we had done the entire year,” Bison coach David Richman said. “But then we also talk about it as a staff – ‘Like, last ditch, what do we need to do, what kind of adjustments can we make?’ Part of that was playing small, some defensive adjustments.
“At the end of the day, we can sit here and spin this any way. Michigan State was clearly the better basketball team today.”
It wasn’t just Fears doing the distribution, either. MSU’s ball movement was at its peak for the season, with eight others getting at least one assist and the 26 (on 33 made baskets) breaking the school’s single-game NCAA Tournament record, set by Magic Johnson and the 1978 Spartans against Western Kentucky. The other four starters – Kohler, Cooper, Carr and Jordan Scott – combined for nine more assists.
“I don’t think they talk enough about how well everybody else can pass,” said Fears, who entered the NCAA Tournament leading the nation at 9.2 assists per game.
That, Fears said, makes the Spartans dangerous in the tournament. Their vastly improved 3-point defense against NDSU (27-8) does as well. The Bison entered making 36.5% of their 25.8 3-point attempts per game, the 38th-best percentage in Division I. MSU held them to just 6-for-25 from the arc Thursday, including a smothering 1-for-19 start, after allowing its previous five opponents to hit 43.3% (55-of-127) and all made 10-or-more 3s.
“I thought that was what I was most proud of,” said Izzo, who won his 60th NCAA Tournament game to open his record 28th straight appearance. “We threatened them: ‘Guard somebody.’ We just hadn’t been guarding, and we were giving space out on the perimeter. … It was old-fashioned. No game plan, nothing fancy – it was guard or sit down.”
There is no time now to sit and rest on their laurels, as Izzo said. MSU turns around and will face 6-seed Louisville on Saturday (2:45 p.m., CBS) with a chance to get back to the Sweet 16 for the second straight year and the 17th time in Izzo’s 31 seasons.
The goal in his program is not to win a game. It’s to survive and advance to the next site in the East region, which would be Washington next week.
“It feels really really good. But at the same time, we have to be mature about this,” Kohler said. “This is a very important time for us, because we can’t be premature and get super riled up about the first win.
“We have to win the weekend. That’s the goal.”
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State basketball learning to share and share again in NCAAs