Former Joliet West standout Fears Jr. chooses Michigan State

Former Joliet West standout Jeremy Fears Jr. has done a considerable amount of raising his national profile since his freshman season with the Tigers.

Fears Jr., now a junior at La Lumiere Prep Academy in LaPorte, Indiana, ended his recruitment on Thursday by committing to Michigan State University. Many scouting services regard Fears as a top 30 national prospect in the Class of 2023.

Fears Jr. had secured a number of offers from prominent Division I programs, whittling the list of schools down to three at the time of announcement, as he chose the Spartans over his other two finalists, Michigan and Illinois.

“Michigan State has always been a dream school,” Fears Jr. said on a ESPNU broadcast Thursday afternoon. “Coach Izzo has always been one of my favorite coaches. He just said I’d be able to come in and play, and he just liked the my type of game and it fits Michigan State.”

Fears Jr. was a key performer on Joliet West’s team in 2019, a squad that finished the abbreviated season with a 29-4 record and was still alive in the Class 4A postseason when Joliet West’s sectional semifinal victory over Neuqua Valley turned out to be the final game of the 2019 season when the pandemic postponed the remainder of postseason play.

With the 2020 season in question, Fears Jr. elected to transfer to La Lumiere, a school that plays a national schedule against some of the top programs in the nation. Currently, the ESPN High School Boys’ Basketball Top 25 has La Lumiere (10-1) with the No. 10 ranking in the nation.

La Lumiere hosts a tournament this weekend where it will face the nation’s currently top-ranked team Montverde (Fla.) on Saturday night, while it will challenge one of the nation’s pedigree high school programs Oak Hill (Va.) on Friday night. Oak Hill is currently ranked No. 17 and the game will be broadcast on ESPN2 at 7 p.m.