The Arms Race: U-M, MSU and a resurrected battle for the best in-state talent (2024)

It began, uneventfully, on Aug 4, 2016. Thomas Kithier, then a junior forward from Dakota High School in Macomb, committed to Michigan State. Three days later, Isaiah Livers, a senior from Kalamazoo Central High School, pledged his commitment to Michigan.

And so it’s gone, one by one, ever since.

In the past 14 months, nine of the last 10 players to commit to Michigan and Michigan State have been in-state products. An arms race, of sorts, has developed between the state’s two flagship programs, with both shifting to a reliance on a cache of hometown talent. The last out-of-state recruit to commit to either school was Jaren Jackson Jr. (to MSU) in September 2016. For both schools thereafter, it’s been nothing but in-state stockpiling.

“You have to be able to get the good kids in the state,” Clarkston High School coach Dan Fife said, “if they’re good enough.”

It sounds as simple as that.

It isn’t.

Prior to this 14-month shopping spree, only five of the 27 combined recruits among the players making up Michigan and Michigan State’s 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 recruiting classes were in-state products. MSU accounted for three: Miles Bridges, Cassius Winston and Deyonta Davis. U-M accounted for two: Austin Davis and Derrick Walton Jr.

So how did in-state recruiting go from there to here? How did this land go from barren to fertile?

The answer stretches well beyond the 94 feet of your local high school gym.

Back to last fall …

After Kithier committed to Michigan State and Livers committed to Michigan, the train kept rolling.

Xavier Tillman, a bruising 2017 forward from Grand Rapids Christian, pledged to Michigan State in September 2016. Two months later, Clarkston’s Foster Loyer, a 2018 point guard, announced he was headed to Michigan State, too. Then David DeJulius, a 2018 point guard at Detroit East English Village, picked Michigan in December.

After the school year ended, momentum returned. Taylor Currie, a 2019 forward from Clarkston, who eventually reclassified to the 2018 class, committed to Michigan in mid-June. A week later, Gabe Brown, a crafty 2018 forward from Belleville, committed to Michigan State. One week after that, 2018 East Lansing forward Brandon Johns picked Michigan. The next day, Grand Rapids Catholic Central’s Marcus Bingham Jr., another 2018 forward, picked Michigan State.

This stretch is unlike anything in recent history.

“In my case,” DeJulius said by phone this week, “Michigan was my dream school. And I know it’s the same thing in Gabe’s case, Thomas’s case, Foster’s case, so on. I think the players now are really taking hold of the idea to staying home and reppin’ their home state.”

It’s a common-sense equation: Michigan players going to Michigan schools. The idea has worked for a long time, from Magic Johnson and Shawn Respert at MSU, to Rudy Tomjanovich and Chris Webber at U-M; from Steve Smith and Draymond Green at MSU, toCampy Russell and Roy Tarpley at U-M.Four of the top six scorers on Michigan’s 1989 national title team were Michiganders: Glen Rice (Flint), Loy Vaught (Grand Rapids), Terry Mills (Romulus) and Mark Hughes (Muskegon). Five of the top seven scorers on Michigan State’s2000 national title team hailed from the state:Morris Peterson (Flint), Mateen Cleaves (Flint), Charlie Bell (Flint), Mike Chappell (Southfield) and Jason Richardson (Saginaw). Beyond U-M and MSU, most of the best players in CMU, EMU, WMU, Detroit Mercy and Oakland history are homegrown.

Recent years, however, have marked an unmistakable decline in the amount of available talent at home.Between 2014-16, only 11 Michigan high school players, total, signed with power-conference DI programs. Three of those players — Bridges, Josh Jackson and Devon Daniels — didn’t complete their high school degrees in Michigan, but instead left for out-of-state prep schools.

While Michigan still produced a handful of Big Ten-caliber players in the last five years, thecornucopia once enjoyed by Michigan and Michigan State dwindled to a side plate. For Tom Izzo, whose reliance on in-state talent has ranked second only to Ford Motors, theparadigm shift has been jarring. Sitting in his office last week, the 62-year-oldIron Mountain, MI, native leaned forward and explained:“In the late 80s, I could go and watch a [high school] game in this state with pro—sss.That’s with an S, as in, plural — multiple [future] pros on the court at the same time.When I got this job [in 1995], there were 10 or 15 [Michigan] kids in a class that could play here.”

As the talent depleted in recent years and the Spartans missed on some of their few in-state recruits, the roster changed. Between 2009 and 2012, nine of 18 recruits were Michigan kids, including notable names like Draymond Green, Derrick Nix, Keith Appling, Denzel Valentine and Matt Costello. Then came the major drop-off between 2013 and 2016. Izzo signed one Michigan player (Deyonta Davis), while going out-of-state to bring in seven recruits between 2013 and 2015, two of whom later transferred (Javon Bess, Marvin Clark). When the program missed on some of their top recruiting targets during this time, Izzo went outside the state lines to fill the holes, not around the corner.

Michigan’s dearth of in-state players has spanned 10 years and been two-pronged — a result of both the talent dip and Beilein’s dispassion for recruiting the state. The U-M coach has pursued Michigan products with passing interest, but mostly avoided border wars with Izzo. Prior to this recent spurt of local shopping, Beilein signed only five in-state players — Davis, Walton, Carlton Brundidge, Jon Horford and Jordan Morgan — in his tenure. That’s 5 of 32 recruits between 2008 and 2016. Only one, Walton, came aboard between 2012 and 2016.

Beilein declined to comment for this story, but there is a budding perception throughout the state.

“Beilein is definitely putting more of an emphasis on recruiting Michigan,” East Lansing coach Steve Finamore said.

“Michigan State has always made in-state recruiting a priority, but Michigan, in the recent past, wasn’t recruiting Michigan too heavily,” saidMike Faletti, a fixture with The Family, Detroit’s top AAU program. “But Beilein seems to be coming around.”

Even Izzo noted: “John has figured it out.”

However, that only works if there’s enough talent here worth pursuing. In total, the state’s 2017 recruiting class sent eight players to high-level Division I programs, including Tillman to Michigan State and Livers to Michigan. Livers became the first Michigan Mr. Basketball winner to go to U-M since Manny Harris in 2007 (MSU had five in that span).

The state’s 2018 class, meanwhile, has seven players committed to Michigan and Michigan State. Another, Trevion Williams from Sterling Heights, is heading to Purdue.Lamar Norman, an explosive guard from Grand Rapids, is generating DI offers and on the verge of being a high-major recruit. Same goes for Brandon Wade, a point guard from Ann Arbor Skyline. There are others, and the class, in fact, could easily be larger. Duane Washington Jr., a former point guard from Grand Rapids Christian who holds an offer from Michigan and other power conference programs, transferred two weeks ago to Sierra Canyon High School, a national powerhouse in California.

Washington’s transfer was a harsh reminder of a recent pandemic. Underscored by Bridges’ move from Flint Southwestern High to Huntington (W.V.) Prep in 2013, and Josh Jackson going from Detroit Consortium to Prolific Prep in California, Michigan high school basketball’s reputation deteriorated in recent years. In a game like recruiting, you’re only as good as your stars are, and Michigan was losing its stars and more.

In reality, the talent drain began over a decade ago as the financial crisis gripped the state. Jobs vanished. Families moved. Schools closed. Problems compounded problems and the trickle-down effect tore through the fabric of high school athletics. Former hotbeds of talent turned into boarded up buildings. High schools inPontiac, Flint and Saginaw shut down. All told, according to Nathan Bomey’s 2016 book, “Detroit Resurrected,”102,000 students left Detroit Public Schools from 2003-03 to 2013-14, fleeing for charter schools or distant school districts.

All the while, dovetailing with Michigan’s bombing economy and fractured school system, traditional high school basketball across the country was plundered over the last 10-15 years. The result: a massive spike in transfers nationwide and the ever-increasing prevalence of prep schools. Top players are recruited off rosters. AAU affiliations now carry more weight than school pride. All players are free agents.

The state of Michigan has been the paragon for all these trends.

This is where the state’s 2018 class is serving as an embankment. Each player has been poked and prodded by elite prep schools. DeJulius toldThe Athleticlast week that he called Prolific Prep the prior night to decline an invitation. Johns has been recruited by top prep schools since his freshman year, declining each one by one. Brown was heavily pursued earlier this summer, but declined each. Kithier recently turned down mighty La Lumiere, among others. So while Washington transferred out of state and Kithier transferred from Dakota Macomb to Clarkston, it’s been a moral victory for in-state basketball that the rest of the class has remained intact.

That victory is cyclical. Because Michigan State and Michigan have generated so many in-state commitments from the 2018 class, those players, in turn, became less likely to transfer out of state. When signing a scholarship to your in-state power program, it wouldn’t make much sense to wander from the neighborhood. As DeJulius explained:“I opened my mind to the prep school route, but I just can’t really see myself leaving Michigan when I’m playing 40 minutes from where I’m going to go to college.”

In turn, those seniors are supplying the state with a loaded 2017-18 season by sticking around. Competition for state championships is expected to be as good as it’s been in years. The battle for Mr. Basketball is widely seen as a duel between Johns, the future Wolverine; and Loyer, the future Spartan; but players like Bingham, Brown and DeJulius, among others, could take a run.

Fife, a former Michigan player and assistant coach (1975-79) and father ofcurrent MSU assistant Dane Fife, wouldn’t go so far as to say that Michigan high school basketball is back. Instead, he erred on the side of caution.

“I think it’s on its way back,” Fife said. “I just hope it keeps going.”

It won’t come easy. The state has at least four national recruits in the 2019 class — Mark “Rocket” Watts (Detroit), Terry Armstrong (Flint), Romeo Weems (New Haven), Harlond Beverly (Southfield Christian) — with more names coming, but replicating the 2018 group will be difficult. DeJulius said he’s seeing more and more talent coming up the pipeline. He hopes they stick around because “frankly, I think everyone is tired of people saying that Michigan basketball is down.”

If the trend continues, the ultimate winner will be the Michigan-Michigan State rivalry. In three years or so, both teams will field predominantly home-spun rosters. High school teammates and rivals will become college teammates and rivals. Games between the Wolverines and Spartans will be deeply personal. These are games meant to be played in living rooms. It will be the way it’s supposed to be.

“It’s something that’s pretty unique to this place,” Izzo said of in-state players suiting up for the in-state powers. “It can happen here, Indiana, a few other places, maybe. Duke-Carolina will never be that way. There are times that it’s been that way here.

“Now it’s coming back,” he added. “Hopefully.”