Jeremy Fears Jr. had seven assists in Michigan State's 78-70 exhibition loss to UConn on Tuesday. The Spartans still made only three of 20 shots from three-point range. That pairing deserves more attention than the result alone. A point guard can create chances, but his team still has to turn enough of them into points.
Michigan State entered the game with a question about how Tom Izzo would mix younger players and veterans around Fears. CBR's preview described Izzo's plan to move away from substituting whole groups of freshmen together. The box score offers a different question after the game. Can the Spartans get reliable perimeter scoring from those combinations?
UConn made 10 of 25 three-point attempts, according to the official game box score. Michigan State made three of 20. Seven additional threes account for 21 points in an eight-point game. That arithmetic does not mean every miss should have gone in, or that the teams would have played the same way if the shots had fallen. It does explain why Michigan State's other work could not close the gap.
The Spartans outrebounded UConn 37-34 and scored 20 second-chance points. Fears added 14 points and three steals. Freshman Jasiah Jervis scored 11. Michigan State had answers in several parts of the game, and it cut UConn's 30-22 halftime lead to two early in the second half. UConn's recap credits Nik Khamenia with 19 points and Silas Demary Jr. with 16. The No. 4 Huskies had multiple ways to score when the No. 6 Spartans made a run.
One exhibition cannot tell us whether Michigan State missed open looks, faced especially difficult ones, or will shoot this way again. The published box score cannot settle shot quality. It can identify what to watch next: whether Fears' passes lead to cleaner perimeter attempts, and whether another Spartan can make defenses respect that space. Izzo's lineup experiment may help produce those chances. Tuesday showed that the finishing matters too.
