Following an over-achieving year, the MSU men’s basketball will return eight of 12 scholarship players and welcome a recruiting class of four top-100 high school players.
Losing the leadership and All-American qualities of Draymond Green, the skills of Brandon Wood and Austin Thornton and scout team talent of Anthony Ianni will hurt. But highly skilled guards Denzel Valentine and Gary Harris and forwards Matt Costello and Kenny Kaminski will help ease that pain.
“We think we have an incredible class, academically and athletically, coming in,” head coach Tom Izzo said. “We got a big guy. We got a shooter. We got an athlete. That’s something we needed.”
Gary Harris
Harris is the most highly touted of Izzo’s recruiting class.
He’s a McDonald’s All-American — Izzo’s third in three years, joining guards freshman Branden Dawson and sophomore Keith Appling —and the 11th-rated senior by ESPN.com.
The 6-foot-4 guard from Indianapolis is an athletic standout. He averaged 25.4 points, 7.6 rebounds, 4.2 steals and 3.7 assists a game his senior season.
But for all the talk about the recruiting class at Izzo’s season-ending press conference on Tuesday, he had the least to say about Harris.
“We think we’re going to be helped athletically by Gary Harris,” Izzo said, perhaps because everybody knows what he’s bringing.
Denzel Valentine
Izzo had the most to say about the 6-foot-5 Lansing Sexton guard Valentine.
The runner-up in Mr. Basketball voting led his team to a second-consecutive state title while averaging close to a triple double — nearly 15 points, 12 rebounds and nine assists a game.
Valentine is heralded as unselfish and a talented player, but that’s not to say he isn’t a talented scorer.
“Right now, I would call him my utility guy,” Izzo said. “He can play one through four. He has a couple intangibles: intelligence, feel for the game, the ability to make other people around him better. He’s Day-Dayish as far as understanding the game.”
His passing is the quality Izzo likes best.
“I don’t want to put a lot of pressure on him because you never know what’s going to happen,” he said. “As far as the passes he makes and the unselfishness he has, there are a lot of guys that can make plays and make passes and make other people better. But he can do it exactly when that guy needs it.
“Whether he’s taking the ball out of bounds after the other team makes a basket, (or) throwing it the length of the court, he doesn’t need to make a spectacular pass. He can do all those things, or he can make a really simple, easy pass and enjoys both.”
Matt Costello
The Mr. Basketball in Michigan, Costello is a 6-foot-10 standout. Izzo likes the options that Costello will give him in the front court.
Costello averaged 25.1 points and 19.1 rebounds at Bay City Western.
And junior center Derrick Nix complimented Costello with, “He’s a nasty white boy.”
“Costello is a work horse,” Izzo said. “He’s played in a decent league and put up some very good numbers. He can do more than one thing.”
But the thing that impressed Izzo the most: Costello was at Valentine’s state championship game.
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“I texted him and said, ‘What are you doing here?’ And his text back, because I heard he was there Friday night too, was, ‘I’m watching my new teammate win a state championship to learn how it’s done,’ Izzo said. “I thought that spoke volumes for what we have coming in, too.”
Kenny Kaminski
Izzo also didn’t have much to say about the Ohio-native Kaminski.
The 6-foot-8 forward didn’t play much of his senior season because of a shoulder injury, but should provide the coach with a stretch four who can shoot from distance.
“Kenny, who couldn’t play all year at the end of the year, did play in their tournament,” Izzo said. “He could go the last couple of games of the regular season and played extremely well. One of my assistants saw him shoot the ball extremely well, even after having eight weeks off.”
