{"id":17310,"date":"2024-04-04T13:15:08","date_gmt":"2024-04-04T17:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/?p=17310"},"modified":"2024-04-04T13:15:08","modified_gmt":"2024-04-04T17:15:08","slug":"tom-izzo-says-jeremy-fears-has-mateen-type-leadership-skills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/?p=17310","title":{"rendered":"Tom Izzo says Jeremy Fears has “Mateen-type” leadership skills"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom Izzo dropped several good quotes on The Drive with Jack on Wednesday, including an interesting comparison for Jeremy Fears.<\/h2>\n

It’s safe to say that the 2023-24 Michigan State basketball season will soon be forgotten. Unlike some previous seasons, this one was less than memorable with the No. 4 team in the country going from “national title contender” to “bubble team” in the span of a few months. A lot went wrong for the Spartans this year, including Tom Izzo<\/a> losing his backup point guard and star freshman Jeremy Fears Jr. to a gunshot wound suffered over Christmas break.<\/p>\n

Obviously this is something you never plan for as a coach, but Izzo went from having an embarrassment of riches in the backcourt to relying heavily on Tre Holloman to take that next step.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, Holloman did take a step forward, but AJ Hoggard did not. The backcourt could have really used Fears in the second half of the season. Instead, he was sidelined on crutches for a while before participating in warm-ups and walk-throughs with the team.<\/p>\n

Near the end of the year, he looked as close to full health as you can just a few months after getting shot in the thigh.<\/p>\n

Jack Ebling asked Izzo about Fears on ‘The Drive with Jack’<\/a> on Wednesday and he had nothing but glowing remarks about his freshman point guard.<\/p>\n

“He’s got those same Mateen-type quarterback skills and leadership skills. I don’t want to put too much pressure on (Fears) but I think he’s got those skills. He’s got to improve his shooting like Mateen did. But he can guard, he’s a really good athlete. He’s a solid 190-something pounds and he works. He works morning, noon, and night.”<\/p>\n

Izzo went on to say that while Fears’ situation was less than ideal, he learned a lot by watching from the bench in a player-coach type of role.<\/p>\n

Any time Izzo compares a player to Mateen, you can’t help but get excited. Fears feels like he’ll be special here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Love to hear this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":17316,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[59,514,190,189,504,211],"class_list":["post-17310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","tag-featured","tag-jeremy-fears-jr","tag-michigan-state-basketball","tag-michigan-state-spartans","tag-news","tag-tom-izzo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}