{"id":7377,"date":"2023-09-25T14:40:38","date_gmt":"2023-09-25T18:40:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/?p=7377"},"modified":"2023-09-25T14:40:38","modified_gmt":"2023-09-25T18:40:38","slug":"tom-izzo-jaden-akins-gary-harris-type-shooter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/?p=7377","title":{"rendered":"Tom Izzo believes Jaden Akins can be &#8220;Gary Harris type shooter&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Tom Izzo had some high praise for his junior guard on Monday, saying that Jaden Akins can resemble Gary Harris.<\/h2>\n<p>Folks, <a href=\"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/jaden-akins-coen-carr-best-athlete-seen-with-own-eyes\/\">Jaden Akins<\/a> is back for another season and he&#8217;s already looking like a budding star, according to Tom Izzo.<\/p>\n<p>Before last season, Izzo said that he believed Akins would be a breakout performer for the Spartans and admitted that his ceiling was incredibly high. This preseason, he&#8217;s speaking highly of his athletic guard\/wing again.<\/p>\n<p>Izzo went on Jon Rothstein&#8217;s podcast on Monday and said that Akins has gained 10 pounds and he can be a &#8220;Gary Harris type&#8221; shooter this season.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Tom Izzo tells me that Michigan State&#39;s Jaden Akins has gained 10 pounds since the end of last season.<\/p>\n<p>Izzo on Akins: &quot;I think he can be a Gary Harris type shooter during the upcoming year.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Jon Rothstein (@JonRothstein) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JonRothstein\/status\/1706337035483500675?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 25, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Yeah, I&#8217;m all in.<\/p>\n<p>Fans don&#8217;t really give Gary Harris a ton of credit for being an elite shooter at Michigan State. He shot 41 percent from 3-point range as a freshman and was lethal from mid-range as well. You could argue that he had one of the best pure strokes of any shooter under Tom Izzo. He finished his two-year MSU career shooting 38 percent from deep, 44 percent from the field, and 79 percent from the charity stripe.<\/p>\n<p>Through two years, Akins is shooting 41 percent from deep, 41 percent from the field, and 66 percent from the line.<\/p>\n<p>Clearly there are things Akins must work on to be compared to Harris, but he&#8217;s already seemingly a better 3-point shooter than Gary was. He needs to be more consistent in the mid-range and work on his composure from the free throw line.<\/p>\n<p>But adding 10 pounds (of muscle) and working on his shot, Akins as the build of Harris and a similar game, too.<\/p>\n<p>Michigan State already has two elite guards on the roster in AJ Hoggard and Tyson Walker, if it can add a &#8220;Gary Harris&#8221; to that starting lineup, there may not be many teams in college basketball that can slow the Spartans down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>High praise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7382,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[205,190,189,504,211],"class_list":["post-7377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","tag-jaden-akins","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\/7377","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=7377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}