EAST LANSING, Mich. — Tom Izzo appreciates a good four-letter word as much as the next coach, if not more.

And though the Hall of Famer isn’t always discerning about when and where he uses them — ask any of Izzo’s players, or even some of his favorite Big Ten referees — there’s one he simply won’t abide these days.

“Entitlement — that’s my new four-letter word that I hate,” Izzo said, well aware that’s actually four syllables.

Fortunately, though, it’s not a word he’s all that worried about using as he begins his 32nd season as the Spartans’ head coach. Particularly when it comes to his star player, Jeremy Fears Jr., a returning All-American who’ll be the focal point of a team that likely will begin the season with a top-10 national ranking.

Fears led the country in assists last season (9.4 per game) and he led the Spartans in scoring, averaging 15.2 points for a squad that went 27-8 and made it to the Sweet 16. But after Fears went through the NBA pre-draft process last spring and waited until the 11th hour in May to announce he’d return to East Lansing for his senior season, Izzo says he has no concerns about where his head is at now.

In fact, Fears is the reason why he brought up that E-word Thursday during the Spartans’ annual preseason media day.

“I don't think he has shown any of that entitlement over the summer,” Izzo said.

Quite the opposite, actually. And as Izzo spent the better part of an hour discussing some of his hopes and fears about the upcoming season, it’s clear that he thinks his battle-tested floor leader has much more to do with the former than any of the latter.

Izzo raved about the “phenomenal” work Fears and fellow senior Coen Carr put in the last few months, and he thinks both can be the sort of leaders — on and off the court — that are capable of leading a deep and talented roster to a ninth Final Four in his tenure.

“It's not one of my worries, to be honest with you,” Izzo said. “It's not Jeremy. It's the younger guys that haven't been through all the wars that, all of a sudden, they're a top-10 team and yet they haven't done anything yet. So how those guys handle it worries me more than how Jeremy does.”

Again, though, that’s a big reason why he’s confident about this team. Because Fears has embraced the challenge that comes along with all those accolades and the lofty expectations.

Ask Fears about the national player of the year hype and he'll respond with a shrug.

“Don't really pay much attention to it,” he says. “It's not gonna win us games as a team. So I can't really do anything with that.”

Ask him about the Final Four looming in Detroit next April and he’ll tell you it’s fool’s gold at the moment.

“If you don't take care of your business now,” he says, dismissively, “you won't be there in March.”

And from there, he’ll turn back the clock to this past spring, when the Spartans’ postseason run ended in a tight, but torturous loss to UConn, the eventual national-runner up.

“I didn't think I played good in my last two games to end March Madness, and I think I failed the team,” said Fears, who shot a combined 8 for 28 with nine turnovers in a win over Louisville and the loss to UConn. “I think I failed myself.”

His coach would disagree, pointing to the backcourt injuries that forced him to run Fears into the ground over the final two months of the season. He averaged 35 minutes on the court over his last 15 games with a hefty usage rate, and that obviously took a toll in the end.

It also spurred Fears this summer, though, as he took the feedback he got from NBA teams and then got to work on his game. His shot, his handle and his conditioning, the results of which already are obvious in preseason practice.

“He's a better athlete than he was,” Izzo said. “He's in better shape than he was. His shooting is better than it was. … If he’s getting fat and sassy, I'm going to take the first shot at him, and then the teams that we play will take the second shot, because we won't be successful if that happens.”

But more than that, what could — and should — make this a successful senior season is the supporting cast surrounding Fears. By the looks of it, Izzo has enough talent to go 10 or 11 deep with his playing rotation. There’s more shooting on the perimeter with Jordan Scott, Kur Teng and freshman Jasiah Jervis. There’s more lineup versatility, too, with newcomers Anton Bonke and Ethan Taylor adding interior size and sophomore Cam Ward capable of playing some small-ball center as well.

All of that should help the Spartans play faster and defend more aggressively. And that, in turn, will help Fears do what he does best — pushing the pace and his teammates — provided he can continue to show the kind of maturity Izzo was talking about Thursday.

Fairly or not, Fears knows the narrative that grew out of some of his on-court transgressions last winter threatened to overshadow his play. His coach knows it, too. But Izzo also will point to some of his more “volatile” stars of the past — namely Mateen Cleaves and Draymond Green — as examples for Fears to learn from, in more ways than one.

“You just gotta realize that you can't let your emotions get the best part of your game,” Izzo said. “We've talked about it. We've looked at it. We've watched it. Some (of it is), he's going to get provoked when you're a star player — that's just the way it is.”

But what they’ve also talked about is just what made those leaders so vital, in Izzo’s eyes. And something he views as the final step for Fears, who clearly has grown more comfortable with himself.

“If there's a negative that he's got to overcome — and it's what most people have to overcome — it’s not ‘How do you handle success?’” Izzo said. “I'm not worried about that. He'll do fine. It’s how do you handle failure? I don't think he's great at that yet. Things go wrong, he gets upset, and this and that. How do you handle that? It will be very critical for us this year. …

“Can he handle other guys not playing well? Can he be the truest of all leaders? Which means you don't just lead by example, you just don't take care of yourself. You take care of everybody on the team. That's hard to do. There's only been a couple here in the history of this place that I think have done it at an elite-elite level. But he has that opportunity. That's what I'm gonna push him to do. He knows it, and that's what I think he wants to do. And if we get that done …”

Well, we all know where that could lead.

©2026 The Detroit News. Visit detroitnews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.