MINNEAPOLIS – In less than a week, Jeremy Fears Jr. went from Aaron Craft to Grayson Allen – from a plucky pest to a potential problem.
That’s something the Michigan State men’s basketball team cannot afford. Not when coach Tom Izzo has said all season – and then again after losing Wednesday at Minnesota – that “the margin for error is slim” for his team.
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Ultimately, the story in the loss to the Golden Gophers wasn’t about another abysmal start, in which the 10th-ranked Spartans saw their starters combine for just seven of their season-low 21 first-half points. Or the way they roared back in the second half yet again, cutting a 16-point deficit to two with inside 20 seconds remaining. Michigan State couldn’t overcome the hole created by its porous defense and the Gophers’ sizzling shooting in a second consecutive loss, 76-73 at Williams Arena.
Jeremy Fears Jr. of the Michigan State Spartans draws a foul against Isaac Asuma of the Minnesota Golden Gophers in the second half at Williams Arena on Feb. 4, 2026, in Minneapolis.
It wasn’t even the 10 points and 11 assists from Fears, the reigning back-to-back Big Ten player of the week. Instead, it was what he did with his legs and arms – and not the basketball. And it left Izzo threatening to bench his starting point guard, a third-year sophomore and emotional leader who missed all but 10 games of his freshman season in 2023-24.while recovering from being shot in the upper left thigh in December 2023.
LEG WORK: Jeremy Fears gets technical foul for kick to Minnesota player’s groin
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“I go out every game, and I play hard. I don’t intentionally try to hurt anyone or play whatever you want to say,” Fears said Wednesday, after being publicly accused Monday of making “dangerous” plays by Michigan coach Dusty May. “I go out and play every game like it’s my last. So I don’t take a game for granted, I don’t take a moment for granted. So I’m gonna go out there and play as hard as I can every possession, every game.
“It is what it is. At one point, I had basketball taken away from me. It’s something I love to do, I couldn’t do it for a whole year. Most people wouldn’t understand that, and you know, that’s on them, I guess. At the end of the day, I don’t change who I am or what I do. I just go out there and play 150[%], no matter what happens.”
Izzo benched Fears twice in the second half following controversial plays. And he assailed how his captain handled himself at times, with an emphasis on May’s comments.
“I sat him for a while. I don’t know. I don’t even know if I’m gonna start him the next game,” Izzo said. “But I stuck up for him, too. Because what happened in the last game – I’ll just say, what happened in the last game, the way that was handled, was poorly, too. And that starts everything.
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“But Jeremy’s gotta grow up a little bit.”
Changing opinions
The tightrope for Fears is narrow between being an agitator who plays ferocious defense while standing fearlessly, as Craft did for Ohio State, and being labeled “dirty,” as Allen was for Duke. In two games, the narrative around Fears has started to shift from being a tough-as-nails trash-talker who draws fouls at an elite rate to a player who, if you get under his skin, will react negatively and put opponents – and his own team − in jeopardy.
Wednesday night was a prime example of that book becoming widely read by opposing coaches, particularly in light of May’s allegations and social media-circulated video clips highlighting moments from the Spartans’ loss to No. 2 Michigan on Friday.
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Fears, the 6-foot-2, 190-pound third-year sophomore, received a technical foul with 13:28 to play in the second half for a back kick that connected with the groin of Minnesota’s Langston Reynolds, who initially was called for a foul for a hard bump on Fears. The Gophers’ bench signaled for a review, and Fears received a tech. Izzo benched Fears for the next 1:44, replacing him with Denham Wojcik because backup point guard Divine Ugochukwu injured his left foot in the first half and did not return.
Before that call, the Spartans (19-4, 9-3 Big Ten) had shaken off a brutal first half to cut a 12-point deficit to five. Minnesota then scored four points in a row to spark a 22-11 run that gave first-year coach Niko Medved’s team a 67-51 lead on Reynolds’ three-point play with 4:08 to play.
“I’ll say this: He’s taken a lot of heat and all that. He’s a great player,” Medved said of Fears. “Coach (Armon) Gates on our staff coached his brother, knows the family. I know he’s a great kid. He’s a competitor, that’s who he is. Yeah, he gets a little carried away, and we saw that on film. …
“He’s a guy you’d love to have on your team. But you can’t do what he did, and I guarantee you he knows that. But he’s a great player.”
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Izzo said after the game he had yet to see a replay of the play but felt Fears “got pushed” and wanted to know “if he hit somebody.” When told video confirmed Fears’ leg made contact, Izzo quickly responded: “It does hit him? Then he deserved it. Then it was a good call. I didn’t see that.”
He continued by calling Fears’ response “immaturity.”
“You know what? If he plays that way, he deserves it. OK. He ain’t gonna play that way if I bench him the next game,” Izzo said. “Now, he is a physical player. So is No. 6 [Reynolds], so is No. 5 [Jaylen Crocker-Johnson]. You know, they’re physical players. And I think things got blown up in the last game that when that stuff goes public, then you gotta really deal with it. If 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, blown up.
“If he deserves it, good for him. You know, I’ve had it with that, too. That’s not what I teach. That’s not what I coach. I’ve told him about it.”
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Asked if he feels opponents are trying to “bait” him into foolish fouls, as he has done the other way, Fears said, “No, not necessarily.”
“You see different stuff, people see different stuff, call different things,” he said. “At the same time, you just gotta play ball.”
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Tom Izzo considers Jeremy Fears benching after Michigan State loss
