{"id":139589,"date":"2025-08-12T11:55:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T11:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/139589\/"},"modified":"2025-08-12T11:55:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T11:55:09","slug":"good-morning-illini-nation-courtside-countdown-michigan-state-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/139589\/","title":{"rendered":"Good Morning, Illini Nation: Courtside Countdown &#8211; Michigan State | Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/secure.tecnavia.com\/cp2_payments\/champaignnewsgazette\/index.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">To subscribe, click here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.news-gazette.com\/newsletters\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sign up for our daily basketball newsletter here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Welcome to \u201cGood Morning, Illini Nation,\u201d your daily dose of college basketball news from Illini beat writer and AP Top 25 voter Scott Richey. He\u2019ll offer up insights every morning on Brad Underwood\u2019s team and college basketball at large:<\/p>\n<p>Michigan State<\/p>\n<p><strong>Last year\u2019s finish:<\/strong> 30-7, 17-3 Big Ten (First)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Notable losses:<\/strong> Jaden Akins; Jase Richardson; Tre Holloman; Frankie Fidler; Xavier Booker; Szymon Zapala<\/p>\n<p><strong>Players returning:<\/strong> Jaxon Kohler, Sr., F; Jeremy Fears Jr., R-So.; Kur Teng, So., G; Carson Cooper, Sr., C; Coen Carr, Jr., F<\/p>\n<p><strong>Key additions:<\/strong> Trey Fort, Sr., G; Kaleb Glenn, Jr., F; Jordan Scott, Fr., F; Cam Ward, Fr., F<\/p>\n<p><strong>One extended thought:<\/strong> Continuity has been Michigan State\u2019s biggest strength in the transfer portal era. It\u2019s a big reason why last year\u2019s team, even though it was not necessarily the most talented in the Big Ten, still won another conference title for Tom Izzo. The return of Fears, Carr, Kohler and Cooper give the Spartans some measure of said continuity, but the fact their top three scorers from last season are all gone to graduation (Akins), the NBA (Richardson) and the portal (Holloman) can\u2019t be ignored.<\/p>\n<p>Izzo and Co. are banking on the two transfers added in the offseason \u2014\u00a0Fort (UT Martin\/Mississippi State\/Samford) and Glenn (Louisville\/Florida Atlantic) \u2014 filling some of that void. Like Fort becoming the type of scorer Akins was even if it won\u2019t come with the same defensive prowess. A huge jump in production from Carr, an incredible athlete, wouldn\u2019t hurt either. Should his production match his prodigious athleticism, he\u2019d be an All-Big Ten caliber player.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To subscribe, click here Sign up for our daily basketball newsletter here Welcome to \u201cGood Morning, Illini Nation,\u201d&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":139590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[1339,15347,1317,1337,1338,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-139589","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-illini-sports","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-basketball","12":"tag-ncaabasketball","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115015668503071274","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}