The biggest takeaway on the first truly loaded day of the 2026-27 season: Jeremy Fears Jr. was the rightful and accurate preseason pick for national player of the year.
That doesn’t mean he’ll win it in late March, but the Michigan State senior (and 2025-26 Third Team All-American) sure looks like the most competent, confident and game-changing player to start this young and promising college basketball campaign. Fears was equal parts ferocious and surgical in fifth-ranked Michigan State’s 79-73 upset of No. 2 Duke at the Champions Classic on Tuesday night.
He finished with 18 points, 11 assists, seven rebounds and four turnovers, notching 12 of his 18 points at the line by baiting and fooling Duke into fouls. Fears grew up in nearby Joliet, Illinois, and took the opportunity to show out for a lot of family and friends who made their way to the United Center. After a quiet first half, Fears ensured Duke couldn’t get within arm’s reach in the second 20 minutes. His competitiveness was transmissible, his passing was exquisite and his command of the game was undeniable.
He made teammates Cam Ward, Jasiah Jervis and Coen Carr look like polished products.
He made Michigan State look like the national title contender that it hopes to be.
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Fears did what great college point guards do: conduct the show and make a path to winning in 40 minutes a lot easier than it would have been without him on the floor. In typical Michigan State fashion, Fears responded with his play for the public after Izzo privately held him to account in the lead-up to this game.
“I thought Jeremy was challenged this week a lot, and because you’re given a rank, you have a responsibility to live up to that ranking,” Izzo said Tuesday night. “I thought he was OK in the first couple games. I didn’t think he was Jeremy-like. Tonight, I thought he played hard.”
Beyond Fears, the defensive want-to in this game from Sparty was turn-your-head good. Sophomore forward Jordan Scott scored five points and yet was the second-most important player on the floor thanks to nine boards, six blocks and a pair of steals. I could’ve written an entire column around Scott instead of Fears, that’s how impressive he was. A paroxysm of defensive impressiveness. Whatever Izzo and his staff used to motivate this team: keep doing that.
The collective MSU effort led to Duke’s first wire-to-wire loss since 2024 against No. 7 North Carolina. Duke entered the night as the national title favorite and will probably still be that after this game, but Michigan State showed it should be at that table, just as Connecticut did Friday night with its win over Michigan. If anything, MSU has as strong a claim as anyone right now because a win against Duke on a neutral floor is the most valuable victory any team can declare in the season’s opening 10 days. (No. 1 Florida’s away-from-home wins over Miami and Florida State are the best pair of victories you’ll find, however.)
Tuesday’s win was only Izzo’s fourth in 19 tries against the Blue Devils, a fact he’s all too aware of and spoke to after the victory.
“As far as beating Duke, I’m apologizing to our fans, to my wife, to my kids because they’ve beaten us like a drum,” Izzo said afterward. “Now, the last four or five times we’ve kind of gained momentum because a lot of people are saying that, so it pisses me off and maybe I’ve done a better job. Now, they deserve what they’ve gotten against us, but we haven’t taken a backseat to anybody either, and I don’t plan on taking a backseat in the near future or in the far future, to be honest with you.”
That Izzo quote marries with what we could see all night with Fears running the show: Sparty has that edge. That physicality. That unapologetic toughness groove — maybe on a level above some of the recent good Spartans teams. Most people expected Duke to roll because Duke usually beats Michigan State, Duke has more future NBA players on its roster and Duke had more hype coming into the season.
But Duke — which has equal parts veterans and newcomers — didn’t have Jeremy Fears Jr. and that was one of a few critical deciding factors. Jon Scheyer’s defense will rank among the best in college basketball by the time we start the NCAA Tournament. On this night, Fears sliced it up and looked like he had most of the answers to the test.
That’s what staying at one program with a Hall of Fame coach will do for a player’s composure and confidence.
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And on a night when shorthanded, third-ranked Illinois understandably was taken out on the road against No. 16 Texas Tech, it’s fair to put Michigan State atop the Big Ten power rankings.
There have been three players to come out of Michigan State with a national player of the year award to their name: Shawn Respert in 1995, Draymond Green in 2012 and Denzel Valentine in 2016. (Magic Johnson did not win because Larry Bird swept the awards in 1979.) Fears will join them if he leads the nation in assists (which will probably happen) and leads Michigan State in scoring and guides the Spartans to a Big Ten title.
The early omens are, if nothing else, encouraging.
According to Opta Stats, Fears’ Tuesday night stat line marked the first time a men’s D-I player put up at least 18/11/7 against a top-two team since Dwyane Wade’s historic triple-double for Marquette in the Elite Eight against Kentucky back in 2003.
Wade was a First Team All-American that season. Fears will likely match the feat this year. Fears not only led the nation with 9.4 assists per game last season (a Big Ten record, at that), he was also the first player since Ja Morant at Murray State in 2018-19 to average at least 15.0 points and 9.0 assists.
In coming back to college hoops, he joined Doug Gottlieb in the late 1990s and T.J. Ford in the early 2000s as the only players in the last 30 seasons to lead the sport in assists and return for another season. Ford won the Naismith Award. Come April, maybe Fears will match that too.
