John Niyo: Spartan legacy ready to create his own March 'moment'

EAST LANSING, Mich. — ’Tis the season, as far as Jase Richardson is concerned.

“Most kids look forward to Christmas,” explained his father, Jason, the former Michigan State All-America. “But with Jase, his holiday was the March Madness championship game and that ‘One Shining Moment’ video. He always had to see who was in that video. Since he was like six or seven years old, that's the thing he had to watch.

"For him, it was motivation.”

And now that the Madness finally is upon us — and maybe the moment as well — you can hear the anticipation in Jase’s voice. You can hear the motivation, too.

Sunday afternoon, Richardson and his teammates celebrated in style at the Breslin Center, completing a sweep of in-state rival Michigan and then watching the confetti fall as they raised a Big Ten championship banner. Later, the younger Richardson sat in front of his locker explaining just how long he’d been planning for what comes next.

“I'm so excited,” the Spartans’ freshman guard said. “This is something you dream about when you’re in the backyard, shooting a game-winning shot: March Madness, Final Four, all that.”

All that is waiting for Michigan State now. And if any of this feels scripted for the Spartans, maybe they should thank their precocious freshman, who was busy Sunday regaling the media with stories of his own March madness growing up.

Richardson said he used to stage tournament games on the mini-hoop in his bedroom, and not just the final seconds like most kids did. No, he’d set up an entire bench full of his teddy bears as his teammates — “I think I just had a really unique mind,” he said — and he’d check in and out of games at a make-believe scorer’s table.

“I’d pretend to go to my closet — that’d be the locker room — and then I’d come back out and (go through) warm-up lines,” Richardson said, laughing. “I used to act out the whole thing.”

Even if it meant suffering a crushing loss in the title game.

“Lost two games: one was a buzzer-beater and one was a blowout,” Richardson said, before imitating his own coach talking about those losses as learning experiences. “But that definitely was my mentality growing up, just trying to re-enact those March Madness moments.”

Now it’s about to get real, though, as Tom Izzo’s team pivots to one-and-done time, starting with the Big Ten Tournament later this week in Indianapolis, where Michigan State will face either Oregon or Indiana in Friday's quarterfinals. After that, the NCAA Tourney awaits, and the Spartans, who appear poised to land a No. 2 seed in the Midwest Regional, will be among the favorites to cut down the nets next month in San Antonio.

That’s heady stuff for a Michigan State squad that began the year unranked and was picked to finish fifth in the Big Ten. Now 26-5 and riding a seven-game winning streak heading into postseason play, there’s no question who their best player is, either.

It’s the 19-year-old Spartan legacy who didn’t make his first collegiate start — or log more than 25 minutes in a game — until Feb. 8, when Izzo finally decided the time was right to unleash Richardson, who immediately responded with a 29-point outburst to lead a comeback win over Oregon.

Since then, the 6-foot-3 guard has played at an All-Big Ten level, posting the league’s fifth-best offensive rating while averaging 16.9 points and 4.8 rebounds per game. His shooting splits as a starter in this stretch are elite — 53% from the field, 38% from 3, 85% from the line — and his emergence as MSU’s go-to-player at crunch time has lifted Michigan State’s ceiling.

And while the tipping point in Sunday's rout of the Wolverines probably was the opening tipoff, arguably the biggest shot of the game was Richardson’s off-balance 3-pointer — he’d just rolled his ankle and was on all fours before taking a swing pass from Jaden Akins — to end Michigan’s 14-0 run that had cut the lead to 11 with 7:28 left.

“That’s usually a shot reserved for seniors in that moment,” Michigan coach Dusty May said after his team’s 79-62 loss. “But he stepped up and made a big play. He impacts the game in so many ways and his poise is extremely impressive, especially when you factor in that he’s a freshman.”

Beyond his years

He's no ordinary freshman, though — “He acts like a senior half the time,” Izzo said — and the coach probably can thank Richardson’s parents for that. Both the father, a 14-year NBA veteran who was a freshman on Michigan State’s national championship team in 2000, and the mother, Jackie, who coached Jase’s teams until he reached high school.

“Yeah, he had the answer to the test,” said Jason, a McDonald’s All-America selection from Saginaw who came off the bench for Izzo during that title run 25 years ago. “Because I told Jase, no matter if it's two minutes or if it’s 15, 20, 30 or 40, you make an impact on the game, whether that’s rebounding, playing defense, or whatever it is. And he understood that. The type of player he was raised as, and coached by his mom, the message was always be prepared, always be ready, always do your job.”

That didn’t change just because the job description did a month ago, with Tre Holloman willingly ceding his starting role to Richardson, the four-star recruit with an NBA pedigree. If anything, it just means more time spent watching film with Izzo these days, studying the different ways teams are trying to defend him now and finding areas to attack.

“For a young man like Jase to come in here, and come in with more questions than answers, and take coaching like he has,” Wisconsin coach Greg Gard noted recently, “I think Tom really appreciates it."

Richardson appreciates all of this, even the parts that are admittedly catching him by surprise. Like that moment during Sunday’s postgame celebration, when the Breslin crowd pre-empted Izzo’s speech by serenading the freshman with chants of “One more year!”

“I mean, I heard it, but I didn't know who they were saying it to,” said Richardson, who could be a top-20 pick in this year’s NBA draft if he decides to turn pro. “And then I looked up at the jumbotron and I saw my face, so it was just kind of funny. …

“I wasn’t expecting that at all. If you would’ve asked me in November if I’d be getting that at the end of the season, I wouldn’t have believed you.”

Believe it or not, it’s the last thing on his mind right now, as the Spartans gear up for what they hope is a month-long tournament run.

“I kind of just ignore all that,” he said of the NBA talk, “and focus on what we have to do as a team.”

His father said that level-headed approach comes naturally.

“He's always been a very mature kid,” Jason said. “He understands there’s some rumors about what the draft stock is. But he's not worried about that. One thing I’ve always said about this kid is he’s a winner. For him, it’s winning championships. That's all he dreams of is winning championships.”

And if that rings familiar, well, there’s a reason for that.

“I just told Jase Richardson the other day, ‘Daddy’s not the only one that has a ring in that house anymore,’” Izzo joked Sunday.

But as Jason likes to remind his eldest son — brother Jaxon is a top recruit in the class of 2026 — he’s got a handful of rings at home. He won two Big Ten titles (and a Big Ten Tournament title) and went to back-to-back Final Fours.

“And he’s still got a national championship ring,” Jase said, smiling. “So there's levels to this. I still got a couple more that I gotta get.”

More than anything, though, what he wants to recreate now is the feeling he and his teammates shared Sunday, surrounded by all the MSU hoops alums on the Breslin court.

“It makes you want to do it again with a national championship,” Jase said. “I mean, you have a moment like that, and you just want to keep having moments like that.”

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