Point Guard Battle Highlights MSU's Big Matchup at Purdue
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Two of the best players at their position in the country will be facing one another soon.
No. 13 Michigan State (22-5 overall, 12-4 Big Ten) is in the middle of its preparation for eighth-ranked Purdue (22-5, 12-4) for a game that will have significant implications on the Spartans’ Big Ten Tournament seeding along with it being a huge opportunity for MSU to bolster its NCAA Tournament resume.
These two teams’ leaders are pretty easy to spot. They’re also perhaps the two best point guards in the entire Big Ten and among the best in the nation. Michigan State’s Jeremy Fears Jr. against Purdue’s Braden Smith is a heavyweight point guard battle that is main event worthy.
Fears is right in the race to become both a first-team All-Big Ten honoree and an All-American. Smith has already been the Big Ten Player of the Year and a consensus All-American himself. There’s no better way for Fears to prove he deserves similar accolades than during this face-off.
Breaking Down the Numbers
There is a sizable gap between the top two assist-getters and then everybody else. Fears is first, averaging 9.2 assists per game and at 249 for the year. That’s the fourth-most in any season in MSU history and 42 away from tying Cassius Winston’s record of 291 from 2018-19.
Smith is in second, a full assist per game ahead of third. He’s not too far behind Fears for the silver medal right now, averaging 8.7 assists per game and standing at 236 total for his season. Smith averaged 8.7 assists per game last year across 36 games, setting a new Big Ten single-season record of 313 assists last season. He’s also only six assists away from becoming the first-ever Big Ten player to reach 1,000 career assists. Smith broke MSU’s Winston’s Big Ten record of 890 career assists earlier this season.
The separation can best be told in both players’ assist rates, which calculates the percentage of baskets from the players’ teammates that are from their passes while they’re on the court. According to CBB Reference, Fears actually owns the Division I career record (since the site started calculating it in 2009-10) at 45.3%. His number for this season is way larger, too — currently sitting at 53.5%, which would also be the site’s single-season record. The closest player to him this year — Daeshun Ruffin of Jackson State — is down at 46.2%.
As for Smith, he’s currently at 38.5% for his career. That currently sits down at 23rd. It’s still highly impressive, but it’s not first place. He led the nation at 44.1% last season and has stayed relatively flat at 43.7% this year, but that’s down in fifth in the country this time.
Both players’ ability to score cannot be ignored, either. Smith has averaged 13.0 points per game across his entire four-year career at Purdue, but he has averaged 14.9 points a contest this season and 15.8 points per contest last season.
The jump from Fears has been pretty huge, too. Fears averaged just 3.5 points per game as a true freshman in 12 appearances and 7.2 points a contest during his first full season last year. He’s more than doubled that per-game output this season now, too, sitting at 15.0 points per game so far this season.
Fears’ consistency as a scorer has also been a big development that has gotten noticeably better as this campaign has progressed. He was held to fewer than 10 points in six of MSU’s first dozen games this season. Starting with the team’s Dec. 29 game against Cornell, Fears has scored at least 10 points in 15 straight games, averaging 18.3 points per contest. It hasn’t come with a drop-off in his passing either, as he’s averaging 9.3 assists to just 2.1 turnovers across that span.
The turnovers are perhaps the separator in any sort of Fears-Smith debate right now. Smith is still probably the more capable scorer, but both of them are averaging virtually the same number of points (Fears has literally scored two more all season). When comparing these two players right now, one has to split hairs a little bit. Smith averages 2.9 turnovers per game to Fears’ 2.2. For every 100 possessions, Smith gives it up 5.2 times to Fears’ 4.1.
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A 2025 graduate from Michigan State University, Cotsonika brings a wealth of experience covering the Spartans from Rivals and On3 to his role as Michigan State Spartans Beat Writer on SI. At Michigan State, he was also a member of the world-renowned Spartan marching band for two seasons.
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