He was shot just months into his freshman year. Now, Jeremy Fears Jr. is Tom Izzo’s latest Spartan floor general
By Dana O’Neil, CNN
East Lansing, Michigan (CNN) — Seconds after getting crossed up by Jase Richardson during an October 2024 practice, Jeremy Fears, Jr. responded by dishing a hard foul to the then-freshman Michigan State guard.
Watching at the half-court line, Tom Izzo lost his marbles. Spewing invectives at Fears, he pointed to the exits and told his starting point guard to get out. Fears tried to plead his case, but his teammates intervened and Jaden Akins and Carson Cooper told Fears to let it go and just leave.
Fears reluctantly walked off the court and practice went on without him. Maybe an hour later, as practice drew to a close, the gym side door opened and Fears walked in. He quietly took a seat in a folding chair and waited. After Izzo excused his players and chatted with a few visitors, he walked over and took a seat next to Fears. The two talked for more than 10 minutes, taking turns gesturing pointedly.
Eventually Izzo slung his arm across Fears’ shoulders and pulled him into the crook of his shoulder. Izzo talked. Fears listened.
A year and change after that practice eviction, there have been plenty more arms-slung-around-the-shoulders conversations between Fears and Izzo. This season Fears has shown both the maturity of the player who came back to discuss his actions with his head coach, and the foolishness of the hothead who responded with the hard foul.
As Michigan State prepares for its 28th consecutive NCAA Tournament run, which version of Fears shows up might very well decide how far the Spartans go.
The redshirt sophomore is the nation’s best playmaker and inarguably the motor that revs the Spartans’ engine. He has doubled his point production from a year ago and leads the country in assists per game. He has posted 11 double-doubles, 13 times dishing out 10 dimes or more, never once failing to deliver at least five. A first team All-Big Ten selection, he’s also one of five finalists for the Bob Cousy Award, presented to the nation’s best point guard and on the final ballot for the Wooden Award, given to the nation’s best player.
Yet he has undercut some of his hard-earned goodwill with a near Pavlovian instinct to go full Grayson Allen. Michigan head coach Dusty May called Fears out for “dangerous” plays after the first meeting between the two rivals. “Appeared?” May snorted when asked if May tripped Yaxel Lendeborg. “Wasn’t an illusion, right?”
With everyone’s eyeballs now trained on him, Fears one game later was whistled for a technical for tripping Minnesota’s Langston Hughes. Four days after that, Illinois coach Brad Underwood asked officials to review another play involving Fears and in the regular-season finale, the guard was whistled after kicking Michigan’s Elliot Cadeau in the groin.
They are, to be clear, a small snapshot of plays from a collection of thousands. Fears has made far more smart decisions than foolish ones, but as March Madness takes center stage, he lugs with him the glare of his own unwelcome spotlight.
“I know everything has to be almost perfect now, so the narrative isn’t what people think,’’ Fears told CNN Sports. “I also know I was hurting my team. I’m giving up free points and I’m not on the court. So that’s on me. That’s all on me.’’
He has not, however, had to navigate it by himself.
There might not be a harder job in all of college basketball than being Izzo’s point guard. It requires thick skin and the memory of a goldfish.
“Oh. No question,’’ Izzo told CNN Sports when asked whether it’s difficult to be his point guard. “The advantage is you get the ball in your hands. You get to run a team and be part of a great tradition – Magic Johnson, Steve Smith, Cassius Winston, Mateen Cleaves, Denzel Valentine. The bad part is, I’m going to be on your ass about everything. The one truth is whatever happens, it’s always my fault. And next, it’s your fault.”
But for those who assume the burden, in return they receive a fiercely loyal Hall of Fame coach and the full force of the Tom Izzo Educational Doctrine, delivered in all its unfiltered glory. Every point guard who has played for Izzo has been called into the classroom; maybe none have benefitted from it more than Fears.
“We had a ‘come to Jesus’ meeting, and I told him we can’t have that, but had his back,” Izzo tells CNN Sports. “And I meant it because I believe in that kid. I really do. He can still be a little immature, but who isn’t at his age? But he has grown up so much. He’s been through a lot. That’s not an excuse. It’s not. But you have to think about that when you think about his maturity. He’s been through a lot.’’
‘Ma. I’m shot.’
Sekia Fears didn’t hear her phone vibrating on the bedside table in her Providence hotel room on that night in December 2023.
When she saw she missed a call from her oldest son, she didn’t think much of it. It was the middle of the night – somewhere around 4 a.m. – but a few hours earlier, Fears had called. In his haste to pack for a quick holiday visit home, he forgot to pack underwear.
“What else did he forget?” Sekia thought to herself as she saw his number. She was about to put the phone down and go back to sleep when a text message popped up on her screen.
“Ma. I’m shot.’’
That’s it. Three words. No explanation.
Sekia grew up in Chicago. She moved away intentionally, determined that her children grow up somewhere a little safer than she did. She and her husband, Jeremy Sr., settled in Joliet, Illinois where they raised their family – Jeremy, Jeremiah, Jamarri and Skylar. Jeremy Sr. played basketball at Ohio University, where he was a Mid-American Conference all-freshman selection before transferring to Bradley.
The kids naturally played hoops, too. Plenty of days Sekia would call timeout on games of pickup, especially between Jeremy and Jeremiah, determined to not allow the sibling games to devolve into fights.
The payoff for the rough and tumble pickup games came via D1 offers for both Jeremy and Jeremiah (and a first-round draft pick to the NBA’s New Orleans Pelicans for Jeremiah).
In his first season at Michigan State, Fears was gaining traction as a backup to A.J. Hoggard, upping his minutes and production through the first 12 games. Izzo gave the team a few days break during the holidays and – while Sekia and Jeremy, Sr. took Jeremiah on a college visit to Providence – Fears went to Joliet.
He was hanging at a friend’s house in the wee hours of December 23, 2023, when a gunman walked through the front door and started shooting. Fears didn’t realize at first that he was hit – he could feel his feet, his leg and thought maybe he had been grazed – but one bullet shot through the pelvis of a girl at the party and another lodged in his left thigh.
“I called him and I’m just yelling, ‘Who shot you? What happened? Are you OK?’’ Sekia told CNN Sports. “I can hear the paramedics in the background telling me, ‘Ma’am. He’s OK.’ But all I’m thinking is he was shot. You’re not OK when you get shot. People die when they get shot.’’
By the time Sekia and Jeremy Sr. rebooked their flights and got to the hospital, Fears had undergone a three-hour surgery and was just coming out of recovery.
“He smiled and gave us a thumbs up,’’ Sekia said. “I nearly collapsed I was so relieved.’’
Doctors assured both Fears and his family that he would make a full recovery. But a doctor’s definition of a full recovery is not necessarily the same as an athlete’s.
Two days before he was shot, Fears played 21 minutes and handed out 10 assists. Two days after, physical therapists had to help him walk up a set of stairs with a pair of crutches.
“This was the first real injury I ever had,’’ Fears told CNN Sports. “And, yeah. It was a pretty unique injury. I didn’t know what to expect.’’
As the season went on without him, Fears worked with the Spartans director of athletic performance, Dr. Lorenzo Guess, and athletic trainer Nick Richey.
“We had to go back to the basics, all the way back,’’ Guess said. “I know for him, it was super frustrating, especially those first few weeks. He couldn’t run. He couldn’t jump. He was learning how to walk.’’
But by late January 2024, Fears ditched the crutches and continued with his incremental progress – work in the pool, pedaling an exercise bike and running on an antigravity treadmill. In April 2024, nearly four months to the day of the shooting, he posted a video to X. In the gym by himself, Fears drove to the basket and launched off his left leg.
“I think because I saw a little bit of progress almost every day, it helped keep me focused,’’ Fears said. “And it helped me from getting down.’’
A lingering trauma
But recovering physically does not, in fact, mean someone is healed. Police still have not identified either the shooter or a motive for the attack, and Sekia admits that it has left her both mystified and skittish.
She is disappointed that no one has come forward to share information about the shooting and, as much as she hates herself for it, she finds herself less trusting. She locks her doors now more than she used to, and when she sees a car idling outside her house, she worries.
“I think with trauma, when bad things happen in your life, your body remembers it,’’ she said. “The anniversary, it still hits me but every day that I see him doing things, I’m just so grateful. You thank God that he’s still here, doing what he’s doing. It doesn’t feel like a lifetime ago. It feels like yesterday.’’
Richey encouraged Fears to go back to the house where the shooting occurred. He thought it would help give him closure or at least eliminate any residual fear that the place might have held over him.
Fears wasn’t sure he needed it, but he went, anyway. He headed over in early August by himself – he didn’t even tell Sekia until after the fact. His friend still lived at the house, so he went in and visited for maybe 10 or 15 minutes.
It felt, he admits, a little strange and brought back a few scary memories but mostly it helped him settle on how he would relive that moment. Fears still has a physical scar from the surgery, but he will not and does not carry any emotional ones.
“I’m not going to let that 30 seconds or two minutes determine that whole day, or make it something that I hated or regret,’’ he said. “To, me that was a day when I was with all of my friends laughing and joking. So, I don’t look at that as a bad day. It was just a bad moment.’’
Walking the line
In a lot of ways, Fears arrived ready made for what Izzo dishes out.
Ask Sekia about how she raised the oldest of her four kids and she practically parrots the head coach.
“You’re going to be the one takes out the trash, who washes the dishes, who watches your siblings,’’ she said. “And if something goes wrong, you’re the one who’s in trouble.’’
When Sekia watches Izzo yank her son for a mistake or lay into him on the sideline, she just chuckles.
“I’m like, ‘Look at him getting on my boy,’” she says. “’You stay on him, coach.’”
But the shooting stunted what should have been a year of tutelage for Fears. He was solid last year, in his first as a starter, but this offseason was really the first time in college he could focus on his game instead of getting healthy.
The result is a player who is not just at full strength – as evidence, Fears’ vertical has gone from 34 inches his freshman season to 40.5 this – he’s also at full confidence.
Instinctively a pass-first guard, Fears has figured out the dynamics of being a playmaker. He’s the Spartans’ leading scorer, which means defenses can’t sag off of him. That’s opened up the pick and roll for Carson Cooper and Jaxson Kohler. And his ability to drive to the rim and invite contact creates open shots for Jordan Scott and Kur Teng.
Meanwhile Fears and Coen Carr seem to have a near preternatural connection, the guard intuitively understanding when and where Carr would like an alley-oop feed at the rim.
But to be a successful Michigan State point guard – and gain entry to the pantheon of names Izzo rattled off – requires more than just basketball smarts. Izzo wants an on-court extension of himself – in all its chaotic glory. He demands leadership laced with passion, which is a pretty narrow needle to thread. His great ones, Izzo says, were gatherers – players who would collect his teammates during tough moments or call them out when they make mistakes.
“Jeremy knows how to make players better,’’ Izzo said. “He’s still learning how to lead players. That’s not the same thing.’’
He’s getting it, though. After Wisconsin drubbed Michigan State, Fears walked into Izzo’s office and suggested a team meeting. He didn’t say why. Just told his coach, “I don’t think we should be out enjoying life after we got our ass kicked.’’
“I liked that,’’ Izzo said. “He wasn’t saying anything bad about his teammates, but he got his point across. Good for him.’’
The other part of the point guard equation – the passion – has never been a problem for Fears. He has plenty of opinions and isn’t afraid to share them. Unlike some head coaches, Izzo invites the dialogue.
His huddles at times resemble a family Sunday supper after the conversation turns to politics – everyone yelling, nobody listening, Izzo’s face reddening and a whiteboard left broken, the innocent victim of all the arguing (though they are rumored to be pre-cut to avoid splintering).
“When you get here, Coach makes it known that he would rather you say something and show you care,’’ Fears says. “But the thing with Coach is, if you’re gonna come at him, make sure you bring the goods. Because he’s probably right nine times out of 10.”
Fears pauses and smirks: “Don’t tell him I said that.’’
Fears has no trouble contributing. The same guy who prefers hanging with his dog, Uno, and watching Netflix off the court is a smack-talking chirper on it.
“I don’t know where that comes from,’’ Sekia said. “It’s like it’s an alter ego.’’
But Fears’ motormouth is also his motor and Izzo is the last person to hem any of it in.
So, when the technical fouls started piling up, Izzo tread carefully. It was, he realized, a critical part of the education of Jeremy Fears. He needed Fears’ passion. He also needed him on the court. Analytics guru Ken Pomeroy calculates a player’s assist rate – assists divided by the field goals made by the players’ teammates when he’s on the court. Fears’ assist rate is 53.9, the best in the country. The No. 2 player is at 45.9.
But more than anything, Izzo realized, Fears needed his support.
“You know, the one thing I think I’m good at is I’m good at reading people,’’ Izzo said. “He has a solid heart. He really does. He didn’t need me to tell him what he did was wrong. He needed me to have his back.’’
Getting there
It is the day before the home-season finale against Rutgers and Fears is zinging around the Breslin Center like a hummingbird. He playfully chirps and skips in front of associate head coach Saadi Washington, who, clearly accustomed to it, doesn’t even bother to look up from the piece of paper in his hand.
Fears claps for his teammates as they sprint through a drill, giggles on the endline when they’re waiting their turn and flexes when the starters get a defensive stop.
When the Spartans turn their attention to the business portion of practice and work against the scout team, Fears leads the starters through a few sets before stopping.
He makes his way to the top of the key where his coach stands. Fears tucks the ball into his hip and starts talking to Izzo. As Fears points and explains, Izzo slings his arm around his shoulder.
This time the coach doesn’t talk. He just listens.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
