When MSU freshman walk-on guard Jayson Vincent enters practice at Breslin Center each day and looks to the rafters, he’s reminded of his father.
Vincent, who came to MSU from Mason High School, is the son of Lansing legend Jay Vincent, a member of the 1979 MSU basketball national champion team and the fifth-leading scorer in MSU history with 1,914 career points.
The family ties don’t end there - he’s also the nephew of MSU’s sixth leading all-time scorer, Sam Vincent, who played in the early 1980s and scored 1,861 points.
Coming from a strong MSU lineage is a lot of pressure, Vincent said. His dad has advised him to ‘keep his head up’ as the Spartans’ hoops season begins.
Vincent said he will keep listening to his dad, but more importantly, looks forward to the challenge of working as hard as his predecessors.
“He’s let me know that it was obviously a lot different back then than it is now,” Vincent said of his father. “He just told me to prepare myself and be the best I can be.
“And I’ve never let anything get to me as far as being his son or Sam’s nephew, but I’ve always worked as hard as I can and I won’t deny the fact that I want to be as good as they were, and I’m going to continue to work for that. That’s a challenge I wake up to everyday, and I love that challenge.”
Vincent is a friend of adversity. Ankle injuries have darkened his last two years of basketball. He first broke his right ankle running track as a high school junior and suffered the same injury two more times in his senior basketball season. Vincent had surgery in May and has used the time since as rehabilitation.
MSU point guard Marcus Taylor, a Lansing Waverly graduate, played against Vincent in high school and said he will be a positive addition to the team once he’s healed.
“I’ve talked to him a few times, and I’ve played against him in high school,” Taylor said. “So I know what kind of player he is and as long as he gets healthy he’ll be fine. Jason is a great player. As soon as he gets his ankle straight, I think he’s going to help us out a lot.”
But before he begins contributing, he’ll be learning to transition from power forward to guard. In order to be a college basketball player his skills as a guard need to improve, he said.
“I always knew, coming out of Mason there wasn’t that much size, especially when I first got there,” Vincent said. “I already knew coming to college that I couldn’t be a 6-foot-4 power forward, especially Division I. So every summer I was on the court doing guard drills, going to guard camps, going to other colleges playing guard, guard, guard, dribbling the ball, shooting the ball.
“So I was prepared for it, but at the same time in high school, if we had enough guards, I was willing to do whatever my coach asked me to do. Whatever it took to win that is what I was willing to do.”
And Vincent’s willing attitude has MSU men’s head basketball coach Tom Izzo raving about his newest walk-on.
“The kid is as good a kid as I’ve ever met,” Izzo said. “But he has been hurt again with the ankle. He really hasn’t done anything for 10 or 11 months. He broke his ankle and tore it up real badly after just a couple of games in his senior year. So he hasn’t played a minute since then.
“But he’s a great kid, I love the kid.”
Now with the support of his family, fellow players and coach Izzo, Vincent said he is prepared to make a name for himself and live out his dream of being a Spartan.
“I really wasn’t sure what my basketball future was,” Vincent said. “And I always knew from a little kid up that I wanted to play here at Michigan State University and so I told myself, I had broken my ankle, and whether it was by full scholarship, partial scholarship, walk-on I just want to become a part of the program and then work my way up from there.
“So the title walk-on hasn’t bothered me too much because my goal was to get here, and now hard work is all that is ahead of me and that’s what I’m willing to do.”
