Michigan State Spartans
The Michigan State Spartans are looking for a leader and proven winner to take Cassius Winston’s place. Carlik Jones could be that guy at least for a season. It’s another winning program in arguably the best conference in college basketball last season. The Spartans ended the season on top of the Big Ten with a share of the conference regular-season title, Cassius Winston was a unanimous All-Big Ten First Team Selection and Xavier Tillman Sr. was named Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year.
Looking at the Spartans guard situation, they will have Rocket Watts, Brock Washington, Foster Loyer, Steven Izzo, and Jack Hoiberg. They are in the mix for five-star Canadian Guard Karim Mane. If Jones chooses Michigan State, he’ll be going to a situation like Gonzaga with a winning pedigree and an opportunity to win at the highest level.
Jones would be a good fit at Michigan State because he could be another guard who helps Rocket Watts prepare to take the reins of the program as an upperclassman. Being coached by Tom Izzo would be great for his development as he looks toward an NBA future as well.
Maryland Terrapins
The Terps had their best season as a member of the Big Ten Conference to date. Even though they didn’t win the regular-season title outright, they still won a share. They had a strong 11-0 start to the season which included an Orlando Invitational Championship victory over the Marquette Golden Eagles. They also came from behind to win games quite a bit.
Anthony Cowan Jr.’s gone, Jalen Smith is likely going to enter his name in the NBA Draft and Ricky Lindo Jr. is transferring. In a perfect world, Maryland would land Jones and Yale’s Jordan Bruner if possible. That would solve their lack of star power issue and Mark Turgeon and his coaching staff could continue to develop other players.
Jones would fit into Maryland’s system because he’s a high volume scorer with good court vision. The Terps run their offense mainly from the pick and roll. While Turgeon gets his fair and to some, unfair share of criticism for his coaching performance, he recruits well and this one would be big. It would help ease the program into a new era of sorts but still keep the team competitive. Maryland was nowhere to be found in the 2020-21 season top-25 way too early polls for ESPN, Yahoo Sports, and NBC Sports. A good recruiting surge may change that.