What could the rotation look like next season?

We have had a few days now to come to terms with the fact that the 2023-24 MSU basketball season is over. For many of you, it was over a while ago, while many of us held onto some optimism that this team could turn it around and be something more than they showed for four months. In the end it was not meant to be. But the wonderful thing about sports is that there is always next year. With that in mind, here is TOC’s first look into what Izzo’s bunch could look like next year.

I am going to use the same assumptions I used last year when completing this exercise:

All fifth-year players are gone.
All fourth-year players are gone and will not be using a Covid fifth-year.
All players who have played less than three years will return.
None of the incoming freshmen will decommit.
I am not speculating as to who will arrive via the transfer portal.

Even with keeping all the non-seniors from this past season, there is going to be a good deal of turnover, especially compared to what was lost last offseason. Gone are Tyson Walker, Malik Hall, AJ Hoggard, Mady Sissoko, as well as non-scholarship players Davis Smith and Steven Izzo. As of now, using the above guidelines, the 2024-25 squad will consist of six players who played this entire past season, one who was lost to an injury about halfway through the season, one who redshirted, and three incoming freshmen. There is also one returning non-scholarship player in Nick Sanders, but I will not be including him in the rest of this article; if Nick has the same improvement in stats from his sophomore to junior seasons as his father did, I will pen a very lengthy apology article. That leaves us with eleven players, the same number of players who were apart of the rotation at some point or another this past season.

STARTERS

Point Guard: Tre Holloman. Tre will be a junior next season and will be seeing a large increase in his responsibilities on next year’s team, mostly out of necessity due to the departures of Hoggard and Walker. This past year, Tre showed some improvements from his freshman year. He is a sound defender, which is of utmost importance to his coach, and he can get downhill in a hurry to lead a fast-break or simply to get the ball up court before the defense can get set. This too is a must for a Tom Izzo PG, not to mention for us watching at home as we have not seen a consistently effective half-court offense perhaps since the days of Cassius Winston. This is going to be the biggest development we will look to see in Tre for next season. If he is going to be getting starter’s minutes and handling the bulk of the floor general duties, he is going to improve in his capability of getting his teammates into sets and not allowing the offense to become stagnant. One other thing he needs to drill down this offseason is his accuracy in lob passes.
Shooting Guard: Jeremy Fears. Here I am making an assumption that Jeremy’s rehab from the December gunshot wound he suffered will not have any complications and that he can return to the same level of play he had when we saw him last. If that happens, then that could be the biggest positive for MSU this offseason. Not only is he going to be needed as a member of the starting backcourt, but his presence on the floor will give Izzo the ability to have a second player on the floor with point guard capabilities. His greatest skill we saw last year was his defense as he regularly was getting steals and forcing turnovers before he was lost for the season. But Jeremy will need to improve as a shooter, particularly from three-point range. Last year, he only made one of the six triples he attempted, so volume and efficiency will both need to increase.
Small Forward: Jaden Akins. The only senior on next year’s team (his recruiting class also contained Max Christie and Pierre Brooks) will be thrust into a massive leadership role to help fill the void left by the mass exodus from this past year’s team. It feels safe to say that he will be the captain in ‘24-25. Akins certainly had some inconsistencies during this past campaign, but we have seen what he is capable when he is on. Perhaps he became passive at times and deferred to some of the seniors on the team. But he will not have that option next year, so maybe he becomes the more assertive version of himself on the regular. He averaged double-digits for the first time in his Spartan career last season and will be relied on to improve that figure once again. If he can get his three-point shooting back over 40%, as it was his sophomore season, that would also help things. Jaden is arguably the best perimeter defender on the team (last year’s and next’s), and as such, seeing him average 30 minutes a game feels like it could be in the realm of possibility (he averaged 28.5 last year).
Power Forward: Xavier Booker. Xavier has already stated that he intends to return to East Lansing next season so that is a good indication that my prediction of Booker being the most likely underclassman from the ‘23-24 team to go pro is wrong. Booker may be the player that we saw the most improvement from over the course of the previous season, but he still has a lot to work on, especially if he is going to become a starter. The most glaring deficiency in his game is his defense, as he is still regularly getting disoriented on that end of the court. He needs to do a lot of film study during this offseason to learn the fundamentals of interior defense in order to be the player we need him to be next season. As a freshman, Xavier shot 33.3% from deep, a respectable rate; he will increase his value as a stretch-4 if he can improve upon this figure in his second season. The second big thing we will look for from Xavier will be improved rebounding. If we are asking him to take Malik Hall’s spot in the lineup, he will need to eat up some of Hall’s team-leading 5.7 RPG. Lastly, as a more featured part of next year’s squad, Xavier should be on the receiving end of more alley-oop lobs, so he and Holloman (and others) need to develop their timing.
Center: Carson Cooper. I am sure several of you are flipping out right now and accusing me of treason, so let me just remind you that this is being completed with the currently available players. But also relax. There is a very good reason why Carson was inserted into the starting lineup this past year for not just one, but two stretches of games, including the tournament. That said, the center position will still be the biggest weakness on next year’s roster. There are many areas where Carson needs to improve: ball handling/security, shooting, low-post moves, and passing to name a few. I’d also like to see him put on some more mass to help him handle guarding some of the opposing interior players on next year’s schedule. Cooper’s defense is quite possibly his strongest skill at this point, so some added bulk could just solidify a relative strength.

RESERVES

Backcourt: Coen Carr, Gehrig Normand, Jase Richardson, Kur Teng. Lumping three positions here into one category, here is where we see the most uncertainty on next year’s team. Among this group, the thing I can say with the most amount of certainty is that Coen Carr will be the backup to Jaden Akins at the small forward position. Furthermore, I could even see him getting some minutes at power forward in small-ball minutes. For the rest of this group, it is hard to make any statements. Two of them are incoming freshmen and the third redshirted last year. I expect that we will see very few minutes, particularly in November and December where Holloman and Fears are both on the bench simultaneously, so there probably will not be much of a true second unit for the backcourt. Jase Richardson does have some point capabilities, though he is listed as a combo guard in his recruiting file. He will learn the PG position to a greater extent from watching and from playing alongside Holloman and Fears. I think the biggest battle for minutes at the end of the rotation will be between Normand and Teng, despite the fact that they are very different players. Normand is absolutely a perimeter shooter who will probably be featured best in catch-and-shoot opportunities, while Teng can serve in more of a slashing role attacking the lane off the dribble. At this point, I do not feel comfortable predicting who will see more action between those two, and it really may vary from game to game.
Frontcourt: Jaxon Kohler, Jesse McCullough. Jaxon will come in as the sixth man on next year’s team with some positional versatility. Depending on the situation of the game, he could relieve either Booker or Cooper, but I do imagine he will primarily play as a PF alongside his classmate, Cooper. He has shown a willingness to step out and take jumpers in addition to his display of low-post moves, so that trends toward him subbing for Booker more than for Cooper. The big thing for him this offseason is to improve his FG% from all ranges. The logjam on the inside will dissipate next season with the departures of Hall and Sissoko. With only one incoming big man in the 2024-25 freshman class, Jesse McCullough could be walking into an opportunity where he could earn a decent number of minutes, especially if Cooper needs to come out of a game, either due to foul trouble or simply because Izzo needs to coach him up a bit. McCullough’s height varies depending on where you look, ranging from 6’9” to 6’11”. While he has shown an ability to step out to shoot it in high school, I imagine Izzo will try to give him a simpler role in the offense, at least initially, and have him focus on being a traditional center.

In review, the 2024-25 MSU team will see a starting lineup of: Holloman, Fears, Akins, Booker, and Cooper.

The bench will feature: Richardson, Normand, Teng, Carr, Kohler, and McCullough.

There is a noticeable lack of experience in that group of names. Akins will be the only senior and Holloman and Cooper only began receiving significant playing time in ‘23-24. The sophomores and freshmen do offer a good amount of skill and untapped potential. The second-year players in particular are going to need to step up in a major way if MSU wants to be better than they were this past year. Just a little over seven months until next season!