{"id":7384,"date":"2023-09-25T15:39:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-25T19:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/?p=7384"},"modified":"2023-09-25T15:39:00","modified_gmt":"2023-09-25T19:39:00","slug":"tom-izzo-says-jeremy-fears-mateen-cleaves-leadership-ability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/?p=7384","title":{"rendered":"Tom Izzo compares Jeremy Fears to Mateen Cleaves via leadership ability"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Tom Izzo was talking about his team on Monday with Jon Rothstein and he spoke highly of freshman Jeremy Fears Jr.<\/h2>\n<p>With Michigan State football seemingly flying off the rails, that means it&#8217;s time for basketball season. And Tom Izzo provided multiple updates on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>Why Monday? Well, Monday was the official start of the season as the Spartans held their first practice. Izzo spoke to the media as well as on Jon Rothstein&#8217;s podcast and spoke highly of a couple of guys. First, he was saying that <a href=\"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/tom-izzo-jaden-akins-gary-harris-type-shooter\/\">Jaden Akins could be a Gary Harris-type shooter<\/a> this season and then he mentioned his talented freshman point guard.<\/p>\n<p>Izzo told Rothstein that Fears&#8217; leadership qualities are a lot like a Spartan legend from his lone national title team.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Tom Izzo also tells me that Michigan State freshman Jeremy Fears has &quot;Mateen Cleaves like leadership ability&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>Fears is part of a loaded freshman class for the Spartans that also features Xavier Booker, Coen Carr, and Gehrig Normand. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/uRzm77FvzH\">https:\/\/t.co\/uRzm77FvzH<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Jon Rothstein (@JonRothstein) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JonRothstein\/status\/1706338545621766596?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>If you know anything about Tom Izzo&#8217;s you&#8217;d know that he doesn&#8217;t just offer up praise to anyone. You have to earn it. He&#8217;s not the kind of coach that will hype up guys without any merit behind it. For Izzo to say Akins is a Gary Harris-type shooter and Fears is a Mateen Cleaves-like leader, it must mean that both of these guys exhibit those positive attributes in excess.<\/p>\n<p>And for Izzo to compare anyone to Mateen in any way is huge. He&#8217;s a big Mateen guy (obviously).<\/p>\n<p>Fears has been touted as a great leader and he even calls himself the &#8220;floor general&#8221; which shows that he commands respect from everyone while he&#8217;s running the point. If he can grow into a Mateen-like leadership role early in his career, he, too, could become an all-time great in East Lansing. Heck, I&#8217;d bet money on that happening.<\/p>\n<p>While Fears doesn&#8217;t need to be that type of leader right away with four seniors on the team, he may be looked at to do that next season.<\/p>\n<p>Buy stock in Fears now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More high praise from Tom Izzo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7387,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[514,190,189,504,211],"class_list":["post-7384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","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\/7384","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=7384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}