While the Michigan State Football Team will be playing their second game of the season at Spartan Stadium, there will also be some action just down Shaw Lane at the Breslin Center. This weekend, Tom Izzo is running the annual Grind Week. For those who are unfamiliar, this is an annual event that serves as a family reunion of sorts for the basketball program, a time when former players return to campus to shoot hoops and impart wisdom on current members of the roster. It has also become one of Coach Izzo’s strongest recruiting tools, a chance to get high school recruits to East Lansing and let them see first-hand what playing for MSU is about. It’s about being a part of a club that you get to come back to for the rest of your life and still have an influence on.
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This year, reports out of the Breslin Center are that Draymond Green, Max Christie, and Kalin Lucas (who is being inducted into the MSU Hall of Fame tonight) are in attendance. We will certainly hear other names before the weekend is over. And in the hopefully-future-Spartans category, we know a couple of 2027 targets will be on campus this weekend.
The first is four-star center Jaydn Jenkins, who is on campus for an official visit. He arrived on Thursday and will stay through the weekend. Jenkins previously released his top five schools including Michigan State with Georgetown, Xavier, Ohio State, and NC State, though he recently cancelled a trip to NCSU so it appears he is now down to four schools.
The 6-foot-10 big man recently completed a visit to Xavier before arriving at Michigan State. He still has visits scheduled to Georgetown (Sept. 18-21) and Ohio State (Sept. 25-27).
At his size, Jenkins would be a strong presence in the frontcourt. Jenkins is ranked as the top player in Pennsylvania out of powerhouse Archbishop Wood while being the No. 64 player overall and No. 8 center, via 247Sports.
The second recruit that Tom is bringing in for Grind Week is five-start point guard Antonio Pemberton. Out of Masters Academy International in Hanover, MA, Pemberton is also the top recruit from his state, and is 247’s 20th overall and 5th-ranked PG. He has his list down to five schools. The others – Creighton, Kansas, Marquette, and Tennessee – have all already hosted Pemberton for a visit. Hopefully giving MSU the final visit is a sign that he wanted Izzo and the Spartans to have the final say in his recruitment.
Pemberton stands 6’1” and weighs 165 pounds, the same weight but 2 inches taller than 2026 PG Carlos Medlock, Jr. He is also much higher up the class rankings than Medlock. Could those two be our PG tandem for the next couple years after Jeremy Fears’ departure?
Stay tuned to TOC for more coverage on Grind Week after its conclusion. Hopefully we will be reporting on some commitments soon.
