All three major men’s programs have had some news in recent days
Happy Friday, TOC Nation. We are deep into transfer season at this point, but at least there won’t be more news of players leaving as the deadline for submitting your name to the portal for both basketball and football passed this past week. For MSU, there has been news from the portal, one way or another, for both of those programs as well as for hockey.
Starting on the ice, we learned yesterday that defenseman Vladislav Lukashevich has decided to leave Michigan State. The Russian born player was at MSU for just one season and had already been drafted by the NHL’s Florida Panthers. He scored one goal and had six assists in his lone Spartan season. TOC resident hockey expert Steve Neumann believes the recent commitment of Cole Ward, who was previously committed to Northern Michigan, may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back and pushed Lukashevich to the portal.
Moving over to the gridiron, James Schott announced that he was going portaling on Wednesday. Schott, a DE, has two years of eligibility left after playing for MSU the last two seasons. He was a depth player at best, having only recorded five tackles in 19 game appearances in his time in East Lansing. On offense, MSU saw a trio of players who never saw action also depart the program, OL Jacob Merritt and WRs Austin Clay and Jaylan Brown.
Jonathan Smith did receive his first recruit from this year’s post-spring-football portal window, landing former Texas Tech defensive end Isaac Smith. Smith, who has two years of eligibility remaining, is 6’6” tall and 240 pounds. He recorded 31 tackles and 2.5 sacks a season ago.
Lastly, the last player to leave our basketball program to the portal, Gehrig Normand, has found his new home. The human pep rally is taking his talent and enthusiasm to Santa Clara University.
In the meantime, the news around former UConn commit, Darius Adams, is growing. Reports came out two days ago that Tennessee, another of his former final options, has a meeting scheduled with the highly sought-after guard. That meeting is reportedly a Zoom meeting, not in-person, though the date was not announced. Other schools have also reportedly been showing interest in Adams, including UNC and Alabama. But he should come to East Lansing and be our new Jase.
Taking a look at 247’s rankings of available players, there are a number of recognizable names. Just among guards, Memphis’ PJ Haggerty, Arkansas’ Boogie Fland, WSU’s Cedric Coward, USC’s Desmond Claude, and Kansas’ Rakease Passmore are all looking for their new school. In the frontcourt, RJ Luis from St. John’s, Chad Baker-Mazara of Auburn, and Andrej Stojakovic from Cal are also on the list.