EAST LANSING, Mich. – A viral social media post is highlighting how much college basketball has changed, and it will really make you appreciate how Michigan State built its Sweet 16 team. The post shows every Sweet 16 team’s starting five by stacking the logos of the teams where those players began their college careers. Michigan, for example, has players from Auburn, North Texas, Yale, and two from Texas Tech in their starting five. Only one team’s starting five is entirely homegrown: Purdue. But Michigan State and Duke both have four homegrown players in their starting lineups.
Fifth-year senior Szymon Zapala has started all 35 games for the Spartans after spending three seasons at Utah State and one year at Longwood. The rest of Michigan State’s starting five -- Jase Richardson, Jaxon Kohler, Jeremy Fears Jr., and Jaden Akins -- have only played for Tom Izzo. There’s no wrong way to build a college basketball team. Obviously, many of the teams in the Sweet 16 have used the transfer portal effectively. But Michigan State is proof that players can still be developed within a program.
The Spartans will play No. 6 seed Ole Miss on Friday, March 28, 2025, for a spot in the Elite 8, where they would face either No. 5 Michigan or No. 1 Auburn for a spot in the Final Four.
Jase Richardson recently told the type of story everyone is familiar with. About being a kid, counting down the clock, imagining the winning shot. Only Richardson’s version was probably unlike yours or mine. The specifics involved border on obsessive. When he was around 5 or 6, Richardson imagined his bedroom as an arena, and every game was the Final Four. Cosplaying wild drama, his little emotions tugged and pulled in different directions. His team would struggle early and carry a deficit into the halftime locker room — his bedroom closet — looking for answers.
Down the stretch of these games, Jase would find himself sitting distraught on the bench alongside a row of teddy bears, “my teammates,” he explains. He’d be desperate for a chance to get back on the court. The coach, needing a game-winner, would eventually call his name. Young Jase would then dart around the room, executing the play call. Five, four, three, two … He’d turn, square those little shoulders and fire the ball at his mini hoop. Most of the time, nothing but (Nerf) net. But here’s the twist. Sometimes, Jase missed. And those counted, too. He’d head back to the closet, head slung forward. “I taught myself from a young age,” Jase says, “you gotta learn from losing.”
That’s one way to look at it. Another way? Even then, he knew all this was coming. Of all the players remaining in this NCAA Tournament, none are more bound to the beauty and burdens of March like Richardson. Exactly 25 years ago, his father, Jason Richardson, an audacious dunker from Saginaw, Mich., was a freshman for a 1999-2000 Michigan State team that still holds a place in history. Tom Izzo was a 45-year-old in his fifth season as head coach. Mateen Cleaves, Morris Peterson, and Charlie Bell, a trio from Flint, were the stars. Richardson, the team’s sixth man, was a much-needed final piece.
Now Jason is a 44-year-old father, Izzo is a 70-year-old Hall of Famer, and Michigan State is still looking for its next national championship. That’s where 19-year-old Jase comes in. To be clear, he didn’t have to attend Michigan State. He didn’t have to invite comparisons to his dad, didn’t have to be so tied to his origin story. Jase was born in California and spent most of his formative years in Colorado, Las Vegas, and Miami. He had never lived in Michigan before this season. He only vaguely recalls visiting Saginaw as a kid.
But Jase always knew he was going to take on the weight of his name, and what began this season as a nice story of lineage is now approaching bizarre levels of serendipity. Michigan State did not open its 2024-25 campaign with national championship hopes. The Spartans were picked to finish fifth in the Big Ten. Four months later, they’re 29-6 and in the Sweet 16. The second-seeded Spartans will play sixth-seeded Ole Miss on Friday in Atlanta.
Much of Michigan State’s ascent is a direct reflection of Richardson. The 6-foot-3 guard is hurtling through a process that’s gone faster than anyone expected. Once, he was thought to be a decent potential prospect for the 2026 NBA Draft. Such a belief remained as recently as December. Richardson was playing reserve minutes off the Spartans’ bench, taking six or seven shots a game. Then the restrictor plates came off. Richardson moved into the starting lineup in early February and became the skeleton key of a team with very real Final Four dreams. So good, so smart, so versatile. He opens all the doors. Richardson is averaging 16.2 points, 4.6 rebounds, and 1.9 assists in 30.5 minutes per game over the Spartans’ last 13 games.
“I don’t think any of it has really hit him,” says Jackie Paul Richardson, Jase’s mother. “Honestly, we didn’t expect to be here, so I don’t think anyone has processed it yet.” March has a way of bringing such things into view. The improbability of it all. And the ties that bind. Jase Richardson had never heard this story because Jason Richardson never told it to him. “Nah,” he said on a recent Sunday, leaning back in his Breslin Center locker. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
In the summer of 1999, before Jason Richardson ever played a game at Michigan State, the NCAA’s Initial Eligibility Clearinghouse flagged his high school transcript, setting up a standoff between the school and the NCAA. At issue was a high school administrator mistakenly typing the wrong class name on Richardson’s transcript, creating an accidental duplicate. Michigan State first petitioned the NCAA to grant Richardson partial qualifier status. Then it filed an appeal. Then it got outside legal counsel involved. One of the team’s walk-ons, a 5-10 guard named Mat Ishbia, had a father with a law background. Jeff Ishbia, a former attorney, was in the early days of overseeing a wholesale mortgage lending company, but willing to help. He drew up the appeal. Richardson, thinking it all a lost cause, told Sports Illustrated that October: “If it’s not meant for me to play, I’ll just work on getting ready for next year.”
It’s all so easy to forget now. But the saga was a massive deal in the fall of ’99. It wasn’t resolved until Nov. 4, 1999, when the NCAA sent word clearing Richardson, setting off a celebration in the Spartans’ locker room. The following night, in a season-opening exhibition, Richardson scored a team-high 25 points. He appeared in 37 games that season, playing 15 minutes per game, and scored nine points in the national title win over Florida. “Do you know how crazy it is,” Jason Richardson says all these years later, still sounding nervous, like the NCAA might still change its mind, “that it all worked out the way it did?” He’s not talking about the title. Or that team’s place in Michigan State lore. Or Ishbia growing up to be the billionaire donor now backing the athletic department. He’s talking about his life. And how much can happen in one’s freshman year.
As a role player for the 2000 team, Richardson showed enough to be selected for the USA Basketball Select Team, joining other collegians to play against the 2000 Dream Team. There he showed off years of work that had happened behind the scenes. More than a dunker, he handled the ball, made jump shots, and defended. It was clear Jason Richardson — 19 at the time and expecting his first child, a daughter named Jaela — was the next great Michigan State player.
The next season, filling the void left by Peterson, Richardson averaged 15 points per game, made over 40 percent of his 3s, and took the Spartans back to the Final Four. Richardson, raised by a single mother in Saginaw, entered the NBA Draft that spring, hoping to support his family. He did so, to the tune of a 14-year NBA career and over $100 million in earnings. “Wow, I didn’t know a lot of that,” Jase Richardson says. “It’s a whole different story for me.”
A lifetime ago, Jackie Paul met Jason Richardson by crossing paths in a Miami club during a birthday celebration for Gilbert Arenas, Richardson’s Golden State teammate. Jackie played college basketball at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs, but always cared more about the classroom. A “math girl,” she studied chemical engineering and had no idea who Richardson was. Fast forward a few years and Jason Anthoney Richardson II, or Jase, was born Oct. 16, 2005, in Berkeley, Calif., early in his father‘s fifth season with the Warriors. For all the attention drawn by his name, it has always been Jackie who, in fact, built the ballplayer.
A self-described “type-triple A personality,” Jackie began working out with Jase when he was 6. She coached an AAU program made up of her son and a collection of other future college players through high school. Her style was that of an engineer — unapologetic and without a lot of patience. To this day, anytime Jason Richardson is asked about his son’s development, he points to Jackie. “It was never easy for him,” she says. “When I coached, you didn’t know which one was my kid.”
A few weeks ago, outside the Michigan State locker room, Jase recounted his version of a late-game dust-up between the Spartans and rival Michigan. Jackie listened, rapt in the blow-by-blow, holding Jase by the shoulders. Jason stood off to the side, watching and smiling. The preferred vantage point of a father who understands that while it’s great, in theory, to be the son of an NBA player, such a position in the world can also be a crutch. So he doesn’t offer it.
The result is a combination of all his parts. Jase Richardson could walk at 7 months old and could dribble a ball at 1. He went to the best schools and speaks multiple languages. (When Michigan State traveled to Spain last summer, it was the freshman who explained menu items to his teammates.) He was a gifted goalkeeper for most of his youth and, for a while, considered playing elite junior soccer. He played the viola for years and can still dabble. He has a 3.9 GPA. Ask Izzo about Richardson and he brings up some names. Cleaves. Draymond Green. Cassius Winston. Guys who “figured things out on a different level.” Izzo and Richardson often watch game film one-on-one, even if it’s occasionally a waste of time. Izzo complains that Richardson can regularly recount every action in a sequence before the coach hits play. The only conclusion, Izzo says, is that Richardson has a photographic memory. “In all my 30 years, he’s one of a handful of guys like this,” Izzo says. It all translates on the floor.
Michigan State’s coaches rave about Richardson’s basketball IQ. Scouts rave about how he moves in space and how he sees the game. Watch him play and you see a player who’s crafted his own game. Jase doesn’t have anything resembling his father’s jumping ability. Nor is he that big. Nor is he that fast. Yet, more often than not, he’s the one your eyes follow. “He’s not going to wow you,” Jason Richardson says. “He’s just going to be what you need him to be. When it comes to playing time, he forces your hand. You want to play him because he’s going to help you win games. That’s what he does. He’s always going to show up and do the right thing. Winning is all that matters to him.”
And that’s all that matters now. Which is why, last week, in the throes of his worst shooting performance in roughly two months, Richardson stayed on the floor for nearly every key play and every key moment of a second-round meeting with New Mexico. Shot after shot missed. Just one of those nights. But even without the offense, Richardson was too valuable to take off the floor. Izzo stuck with him and let it play out. Richardson scored all six of his points in the game’s final minute and a half, helping seal a trip to the Sweet 16. All that remains are two wins for the Final Four, four wins for a national championship. Whatever happens, Jase Richardson will have the ball in his hands. Who better to tie it all together?
