EAST LANSING – Frankie Fidler was the toast of the town in Michigan State’s locker room Wednesday night. The moment he sat down at his locker after a spell in the cold tub, he was surrounded by reporters and cameras, eager to hear from him.
That’s not how it’s been most of this season.
That’s not how it was Monday after practice, even after his best game in some time at Northwestern.
“The first half of the season didn’t really go how I wanted it to,” Fidler said Monday, sitting alongside the court in MSU’s practice facility. “But building on the minutes I’m out there, getting my confidence up, (Sunday was) just a step in the right direction.”
If Sunday’s performance was a step, Wednesday’s was a leap. Fidler was arguably the reason MSU held off Penn State, 90-85, scoring 14 of his 18 points in the second half, to go with seven rebounds and four steals. He seemed to be in the right place at the right time for offensive rebounds, loose balls and open shots.
“Some other games, I kind of felt like I was in the wrong place at the wrong times,” Fidler said. “But tonight, I felt it was my night, and yeah, the ball was just bouncing toward me.”
Fidler created some of his own bounces, too — with his aggression on the glass, active hands defensively, and looking for his shot, both on the drive and from beyond the arc. After his top-of-the-key 3-pointer fell, giving MSU a 58-51 lead, he reacted with relief that bordered on sarcasm.
“I think I put my hand in my face and pointed to the sky or something,” he said.
If God has had anything to do with his 3-point shooting this season, Fidler might want to try a different religion. His outside shooting struggles have been a big part of his story at MSU, despite working tirelessly on it. He made 49 3s while shooting 37% from deep last year at Nebraska Omaha, where he averaged 20 points per game as a junior. This season so far, he’s made just 8 3s on 44 attempts (aka 18%), admitting that some of his misses have caused him to be “hesitant” at times.
Wednesday, playing the most minutes he had since Maui, he took the most shots he has all season, making 8 of 13.
“Frankie Fidler had a helluva game. Other than that, I thought we were very pedestrian,” Tom Izzo said, in a predictably surly tone as he tries to keep his team on edge ahead of Sunday’s showdown with Illinois.
Outside of a perfect performance, Izzo was always likely to chastise his team Wednesday and downplay any positives. MSU’s lack of sharpness gave Izzo an opening, but he would’ve taken it anyway. “Be upset” was on his calendar.
“Frankie did a good job, a really good job. Let’s not ruin him,” Izzo continued, trying to caution against overhyping a single performance or perhaps two, considering the Northwestern game. “Let’s just say he did a good job. He’s going to get better and he’s going to work at it. He played the 4 a lot tonight. I think that helped.”
Fidler did play a lot of power forward Wednesday. MSU knew going in he might, given Penn State’s probable lineups, and Izzo and Co. liked the matchups for him.
“I was very proud and happy for Frankie,” Izzo said. “I was happy that the players were really happy for Frankie.”
Other than Fidler himself, nobody was happier for him than Jaden Akins, whose face lit up again when asked about Fidler. These two like each other. There’s an appreciation for the work they put in, often together. And there’s a kinship. Fidler has been where Jaden Akins is now (after some early stumbles this season) — as the leading man on his team. Likewise, Akins has been where Fidler is, working to be an important role player who impacts winning.
Early this season, after Akins had an awful night against Kansas in the Champions Classic in what Akins hoped would be his breakout performance, Fidler was there for him with encouragement. Over the last month, Akins has returned the favor.
“It’s kind of funny, because the things I was telling him (early on), he’s kind of telling me right back now,” Fidler said Monday. “A lot of it is, ‘Just keep believing in yourself, keep shooting the ball. The ball can’t go in if you don’t try to shoot it. We put in the work. So just continue to trust in yourself.’ ”
“Frankie is my guy, for real,” Akins said. “We talk all the time. We’ve got a great relationship. Coming from being a leading scorer, now on this team, he’s definitely a contributor who can be the leading scorer on any night, as we see tonight, being the leading scorer.”
The adjustment from the low-major Summit League to the Big Ten is nothing Fidler didn’t expect. But as MSU assistant coach Thomas Kelley put it, “You have to live in it.”
“When you’re going through something like this, you’ve got to go through it,” Kelley said. “We can tell him about it, we can talk about it. We can do all of that, but I can’t emulate the physicality of the Big Ten.
“He’s gotten through it now. I think things are about to settle. And I think his best basketball is in front of him. He works out every day. In the mornings, he puts extra work in. His motivation hasn’t stopped.”
Fidler knew he wasn’t coming to MSU to be the star he was at Omaha. He came to MSU to experience the highest level of college basketball and figure out where his game fit at that level and what that meant for his professional future. He’s not someone who was a star from birth. He grew late. He played on the freshman and junior varsity teams during his first two years at Bellevue West High School in suburban Omaha. “I wasn’t even good in high school,” Fidler said.
At the University of Omaha, he was a double-digit scorer immediately and developed into an All-Summit League player. He still keeps in touch with his old coaches and teammates and was happy to report their 4-0 start in conference play.
He left them to be part of the Big Ten, to experience 15,000 fans a night, for the exposure. And to win.
“That was really my No. 1 thing — I wanted to go somewhere where winning was culture,” Fidler said.
His favorite moment of this season came last Thursday, after he played just 10 minutes in a 34-point win over Washington.
“We didn’t talk anything about the game,” Fidler said. “We watched film in that locker room right after the Washington game about Northwestern. I don’t know why, but I feel like that’s been my favorite moment. It just shows how much we’re about winning and the whole team was locked in. It made me super happy.”
Fidler was recruited out of the transfer portal because MSU needed size on the wing, a true small forward and some extra scoring punch. The coaching staff didn’t know that Coen Carr would make the strides he has. Or that Jase Richardson would be the player he’s been from Day 1. Or that they’d eventually go to a three-guard lineup to start games, with Akins again guarding bigger wings.
Fidler’s greatest impact early on was how frequently he got to the free-throw line. That set a tone for what’s become one of this team’s great strengths — getting to the line and sinking free throws. Fidler leads the team in made free throws (57) and free-throw percentage (90.5%). His ability to play shooting guard through power forward — where he spent a lot of minutes Wednesday — has added to MSU’s lineup versatility. And one of his other best performances came against North Carolina in Maui, his first game coming off the bench. The Spartans don’t win that game without him, either. That’s still probably the signature win of the season.
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The biggest adjustment Fidler said he had to make wasn’t the size or quickness or strength of opponents necessarily. It was the intensity of every team they faced.
“Everyone wants to have their best night against us. Everyone is 110% against us,” Fidler said. “So that’s the area early on that I needed to pick up.”
Wednesday, against a Penn State team with plenty of quickness and high-major athletes playing their tails off, Fidler was up for it and then some.
He’s most happy his teammates saw it.
“They’ve been wanting to see me play well, and I played well over the summer, and they got kind of got used to that Frankie,” Fidler said Wednesday night. “I’m just trying to step my game up and be the best I can for them and for this team.”
He knew Monday what needed to be done the rest of the way.
“It just comes down to trusting myself,” he said.
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Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on X @Graham_Couch and on BlueSky @GrahamCouch.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: MSU basketball: Frankie Fidler realizing he can be big part of winning
