Just five days after the Wolverines went to East Lansing last week and took down the Spartans in a game that led to public bickering from both head coaches due to the unconventional play of Jeremy Fears, the MSU point guard was up to his antics yet again on Wednesday night, drawing a technical foul for kicking a player between the legs and costing his team against Minnesota.
In the aforementioned game at the Breslin Center last Friday night, Fears was doing all he could to bait Wolverines into fouls, which he successfully did a number of times, given his 14 attempts from the free throw line. He did that all while simultaneously shoving L.J. Cason in the back, tripping Yaxel Lendeborg, and laying into Lendeborg from behind on a fast-break layup attempt. The latter incident resulted in a technical foul.
“I think there were several plays that are very dangerous,” Dusty May said on Monday. “I’m incredibly proud of our guys for the response they had to some of those situations. I’m incredibly proud of their self-control, restraint and impulse-control … they weren’t isolated incidents. The film is there, 40 minutes of it. It’s not hard to find.”
Forty minutes of film against Michigan, as May put it, and probably another 40 last night as well, and this tape certainly wasn’t hard to find either. Fears got back to his old ways on Wednesday evening in MSU’s loss at Minnesota. He was called for a technical foul for kicking a Minnesota player between the legs, and was also seen, once again, attempting to trip players on multiple occasions.
The easy thing for MSU head coach Tom Izzo to say after the game would be that Fears cost the Spartans the game and he will be punished for his repeated actions. Instead, when asked if teams are “going at” Fears and that he has been “taking the bait from time to time” in his postgame press conference, Izzo seemingly took the bait himself and blamed May — without naming him — for the way Fears has been playing.
“Yeah well, when somebody comes out and publicly says something about a guy that sometimes happens, but that’s Jeremy’s fault, and I made sure I cleared all that up,” Izzo said. “I think the officials knew it, I talked to them. I did not see what happened in the play. I saw him get pushed and I saw his leg come up, and I didn’t think he hit anyone, but if he did then he deserves it, I guess. But if he didn’t — I questioned it. So are they baiting him? Well, of course. Of course, when you go public with something, you should get baited. And it’s his fault, and I make no bones about it. I sat him for a while … I don’t even know if I’m going to start him the next game. But I stuck up for him, too, because what happened in the last game (vs Michigan), I’ll just say what happened in the last game, the way that was handled was poorly, too, so that starts everything. But Jeremy’s gotta grow up a little bit.”
Izzo was later asked a follow-up question about if he’s worried Fears is going to get labeled in “Grayson Allen territory” as a dirty player, and he admitted he is worried about it. In fact, he spoke with the officials before the game last night and he made sure Fears’ label didn’t have an impact on how he would be officiated.
“Those officials I thought did a very good job of making sure that was going to have no play in it,” Izzo said. “Two of those guys were very veteran officials, and that had nothing to do with it.”
To Izzo’s credit, he did say “if (Fears) plays that way, he deserves it,” and that he might bench him … but right after that, he doubled down on how it’s partially May’s fault by saying “I think things got blown up in the last game. When that stuff goes public, then you gotta really deal with it. That’s private between a coach and a coach or the front office, but once it goes to (the media), then it gets blown up.”
To point the finger at May TWICE for actions that your player took, just because May was the first one to have the gall to call it out, might be the most Tom Izzo thing of all time. I kept listening to the press conference and just when I thought Izzo was going to stop after he mentioned how Fears deserves punishment if he did what he did — and again, Fears certainly did, but Izzo apparently didn’t have a good look at the play(s) — Izzo doubled down on how May was the one that led to all this because he spoke publicly about it.
There’s a legitimate argument to be made that somebody had to say something before a player gets seriously injured. There have been multiple instances their last two games where Fears could have done some serious damage to somebody, especially Lendeborg and the player in the last clip vs Minnesota above. It’s good this is getting more national attention, despite Izzo wanting to keep these things to be kept in house.
Tom, do us all a favor and look in the mirror. Sometimes, the problem comes from within. You’ve been the head coach at MSU for about as long as I’ve been alive. You established your culture a long, long time ago — this isn’t on May, it’s on you. May wasn’t on the court and forced Fears’ leg to go directly between the legs of a Minnesota player, and he didn’t force Fears to attempt to trip guys on multiple occasions. Fears did those things on his own — in the very next game after he did the same stuff to the Wolverines, no less. No matter how you feel, this is on you and Fears, not a head coach at a different university.
Michigan will surely have to be mindful of Fears’ continued dirty play when the Spartans come to Ann Arbor on March 8.
