Michigan State switches up recruiting game plan to land top-10 class

College basketball: Michigan State vs. Nebraska - December 3, 2017

Michigan State coach Tom Izzo talks with his assistants in the first half of their Big Ten basketball game against Nebraska at the Breslin Center in East Lansing, on Sunday, December 3, 2017. (Mike Mulholland | MLive.com) Mike Mulholland | MLive.comMike Mulholland | MLive.com

EAST LANSING – Tom Izzo has many talents that have allowed him to have a Hall of Fame career at Michigan State: motivation, ingenuity, work ethic.

His use of technology isn’t one of them.

The 65-year-old Spartans basketball coach doesn’t use email or even regularly use his computer. When he wants to see some stats, a staffer pulls them up online, prints them and brings them to Izzo’s office. He rails against social media. Until a few years ago, he still had a flip phone.

All of this caused some concern in March, when the sports world shut down due to COVID-19 and recruiting suddenly had to be done entirely on computers and phones.

Yet over the last eight months, Izzo and his staff still put together one of the best recruiting classes he’s ever brought in. That led Michigan State to sign a three-member 2021 recruiting class this week that’s ranked No. 6 in the country, made up of five-star guard Max Christie, four-star guard Jaden Akins and four-star guard Pierre Brooks II.

The Spartans also pulled in a pair of highly rated 2022 recruits, including top overall recruit Emoni Bates, who could both reclassify to turn this class from a strong one into a juggernaut.

How did Izzo pull all that off?

“It was different,” Izzo admitted.

In reality, there are several explanations for what’s happened over the last several months.

For one, Michigan State laid a strong groundwork before the shutdown with the players it signed this week.

Izzo also had an experienced staff to rely on, including a new hire a few years ago that paid dividends in this recruiting cycle.

The first recruit the team landed, Brooks, turned out to be an adept recruiter himself who helped the Spartans seal the deal with the subsequent members of the class.

And once he figured out how to participate in a videoconference, Izzo found himself in a familiar position: looking at prospects and their parents in their living rooms.

“I think it helped because a lot of these families were involved,” Izzo said. “There were a lot of calls with mom and dad and son. There weren’t a lot of other people involved. It was kind of cool how they all did it.”

For the prize of the class, Christie, Izzo had gotten a hint just before shutdown that his program was in strong position. Christie attended what turned out to be the Spartans' final game of the 2019-20 season, a March 8 game against Ohio State, and watched Michigan State win a Big Ten title on senior night.

As Christie left that night, he told Izzo that “this is where I want to be.”

Izzo didn’t believe him quiet yet. But the Spartans had been laying the groundwork on the commitment for years already. Doug Wojcik, hired as Michigan State’s recruiting coordinator in 2018, has two sons who played AAU basketball with Christie in the Chicago area, giving the Spartans an early in on the recruitment that ended with Christie’s commitment over the summer.

Aside from helping to establish a relationship with Christie, Wojcik helped schedule and coordinate the multitude of videoconferences the staff held with recruits during the spring and summer.

“We kind of had a point person that we keeping us all focused,” Izzo said.

The staff, Izzo said, “turned up the heat” on Akins as time went on, an eventually secured a commitment from him in late summer to round out the Spartans' class.

“I felt good about not only the players but their parents, and I thought my staff did a remarkable, remarkable job,” Izzo said.

Izzo and Michigan State’s assistant coaches will eventually return to the gyms and living rooms of the recruiting trail. But when they do, their process will be changed due to this experience. Coaches had to rely on film more to evaluate prospects in this cycle, something Izzo said will help them better choose future players to pursue.

But the 2021 class will always be remembered as the one the Spartans had to reel in in the middle of COVID-19 restrictions.

“There’s been a uniqueness to it that I think will build a bond that will be with us for the years to come,” Izzo said.


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