Austin Thornton has always had a knack for shooting. Playing in high school at Cedar Springs High School, he averaged 26 points per game his senior season, shooting 49.8 percent from the field and 86.3 percent from the free-throw line. In fact, he holds the Michigan High School record for most made free throws with 572 and places second with 54 consecutive makes from the charity stripe.

Thornton walked on to the basketball team at MSU in 2007 ­— something head coach Tom Izzo is very partial to, as Izzo was a basketball walk-on himself at Northern Michigan. He had his best year his senior season, playing just less than 22 minutes, averaging just more than five points per game and shooting more than 47 percent from three-point range. Career-wise, he averaged 2.5 points, shot 40.2 percent from the field and 87.4 percent from the free-throw line.

Now three years removed from the MSU basketball team, he is a graduate assistant for Izzo and the Spartans, and Thornton could not be happier to be back.

“I love our game,” Thornton said. “I love our industry. I love being around it and I love being a part of it. ...I just wanted to come back and be around the game of basketball. I spent three years in the corporate world and it was great. I learned a lot. I worked for a great company called Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids, got some great working experience, some great real life experience.”

It sounds like Thornton had everything he could ask for, gearing up to take his professional career to the next level. But basketball was always close to the former fan-favorite Thornton.

“I very quickly found out and realized that that was work, and to me, being around the game of basketball, it is work, it is tough, but to me it’s all play,” Thornton said. “I’ve enjoyed every minute of it, enjoyed every second of it, and I made the right choice.”

Izzo now has two graduate assistants who used to play for him, Thornton and 1999 alumnus Thomas Kelley. Izzo knows that Thornton has provided the MSU players with a different perspective on not only the game of basketball, but the future of their playing careers or professional careers.

“(Thornton) moved out of Disney World into the real businessman world,” Izzo said. “Coming back, he has a better appreciation. I think he can explain that to players. It’s been good for us, I think it’s been good for him, and I do think it’s helped us with our free throw shooting.”

Thornton has plenty to teach the young players on the team, one of which being how to handle the demand and energy level that Izzo asks his players to give him every practice and every game. Known for his animated reactions, Izzo lets the players know when they mess up, but Thornton makes sure the players stay focused.

“Everyone has their growing pains for coach, but our guys, almost every single one of them are extremely coachable, they listen, play hard, and compete,” Thornton said. “The biggest lesson I learned as a player for coach Izzo, you don’t always want to listen to how coach says things, you want to listen to what he’s saying, the substance of what he’s saying.”

As far as growing pains go, take senior forward Colby Wollenman. He came to the team as a walk-on from Wyoming with no knowledge of the area or what to expect from Izzo. That’s where Thornton came into play.

“He took me under his wing my freshman year,” Wollenman said. “I was new to the campus, new to everything. He talked me through things basketball wise and in terms of class and school and life and he really helped me a lot of ways. It’s really cool to have him back four, five years later.”

Thornton is currently working primarily with the post players, and even though that was a little funny to Wollenman at first, he understands Thornton knows the game inside and out, and just because he played guard, doesn’t mean he can’t teach post.

“It’s funny, but when you play enough basketball, watch enough basketball, you learn both post and guard fundamentals,” Wollenman said. “He was ready to play a four his fourth year I think, they bulked him up and he was going to play the four a little bit, so he kind of rotated with the bigs when he was playing so he has an understanding there as well.”

The common theme throughout Thornton’s career was his free throw shooting. He was solid in every facet of the game, but was always a safe bet to knock down free throws when given the opportunity. Last season’s team was plagued by poor shooting, posting a 63.2 percent as a team from the free-throw line.

“That’s not like us, we have always been a really good skill team, a really good free throw shooting team,” Thornton said. “It’s something I watched last year and came in wanting to help change. It’s funny how that works, when you put extra effort in, you are successful.”

With Thornton’s help, guys like Wollenman have climbed from shooting 22 percent last season from the line to 70 percent.

Matt Costello is up to 77.6 percent from 67 percent in 2014-15. Gavin Schilling and Marvin Clark Jr. have both raised their foul shooting by more than 10 percent. As a team, MSU has improved to 72 percent.

Costello might be the most improved, as he is tied for the most free-throw attempts on the team with Eron Harris.

Both players stand at 67 attempts, and with Costello already only 12 attempts behind his total number of attempts last season, he might be living at the stripe during games, just like how he lives there in practice.

“AT’s been trying to get us to do better in the post, better post moves, but every single day he says you have to make 100 free throws and then you can leave the gym,” Costello said. “It’s really helped me this year to improve my free throw percentage and I’m shooting a lot of free throws this year. Finally being able to hit all of them consistently I think it’s really helping the team out.”

The stats don’t lie — Thornton has certainly been a key to MSU’s shooting improvement.

He brings the extra effort, and you’ll find him under the hoop, feeding basketballs to the players. It isn’t a myth that he won’t let them leave until their job is done.