The annual hustle and bustle of students returning filled the streets of East Lansing this week.

A new school year, a new semester, and importantly, a new outlook for Michigan State sports fans. Even if the Spartans’ football and basketball teams are in some ways half a world apart – both physically and metaphorically.

Jonathan Smith and his players broke their monthlong preseason camp after Monday’s practice in front of the Big Ten Network cameras, grieving that evening as a team with defensive back Armorion Smith at his mother’s celebration of life and having team meetings Tuesday. The hiatus is brief, however, as MSU returns to the field Thursday to get into game-prep mode, eight days out from its opener against Florida Atlantic at Spartan Stadium.

Meantime, Tom Izzo’s squad already has three games in competition mode and a lot of frequent flyer miles under their belt. His Spartans went 2-1 on their trip to Spain, wrapping up their overseas trip on the court with a hard-fought 115-110 loss to KK FMP, a Serbian professional team. They planned to explore Barcelona on Wednesday, enjoy one last meal and fly home Thursday.

Even though classes begin Monday at MSU, both Smith and Izzo’s teams already have built up valuable credits in experience over the last month they hope will shape the direction of their 2024-25 seasons.

Hoops dreams

With the full schedule for his 35th season as head coach still not officially revealed, Izzo knows a lot more about the Spartans as they prepare to return to campus.

His hope is they also learned more about each other while studying abroad.

MSU prepared for the unexpected in its three-game Spanish inquisition. Izzo fulfilled his promise to work with different starting lineups and playing groups with a team that loses four important pieces from the past three seasons (Malik Hall, A.J. Hoggard, Mady Sissoko and Tyson Walker) while adding two transfers (swingman Frankie Fidler and center Szymon Zapala) along with four freshmen. Fidler flashed his difference-making three-level smoothness overseas, while Xavier Booker and Coen Carr showed they look ready to make a much bigger impact this winter as sophomores.

But the biggest takeaway from the two wins and Tuesday’s loss is this team will go as its three top guards do: Jaden Akins, Tre Holloman and Jeremy Fears.

Fears is easily the most important of the three and essentially is part of the newcomers, despite playing 10 games a year ago before getting shot in in the leg in December and ending his season. Granted a redshirt season by the NCAA, Fears clearly has the keys to the offense from Izzo and displayed he is close – if not fully back – to full health. He looked fluid in transition, attacked the basket and set up teammates with the type of leadership Izzo demands from his point guards.

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Akins will need to improve his sometimes-streaky outside shooting with the move to off-guard from the wing. The senior also must show the ability to take over games, something Walker did frequently in his three seasons. Meantime, Holloman could be one of Izzo’s best combo guards when all is said in done. And his on-court leadership and tenacity, like Fears, completely changes the persona of MSU’s perimeter this season.

How Zapala integrates with fellow big men Jaxon Kohler and Carson Cooper will remain a work in progress into the early part of the season. Opponents who have released schedules already show the Spartans will host Monmouth (Nov. 4) and Niagara (Nov. 7) before the first major test against Kansas in the Champions Classic on Nov. 12 in Atlanta. They also will travel to the Maui Invitational, opening with Colorado on Nov. 25, with a potential game against back-to-back defending national champ Connecticut the next day.

That’s the real test. For now, though, the trip to Spain provided an important study packet for a season that remains months away.

Football focus

Back stateside, the urgency is far greater for Smith and Co.

Not just with the Friday night kickoff against FAU rapidly approaching Aug. 30 (7 p.m./BTN), but with the desire and need to finally discard the distaste from the fall of Mel Tucker and shortcomings and failures of the program since the tail end of the Mark Dantonio era. MSU went just 4-8 last season, missing a bowl game for the third time in four seasons after Tucker was dismissed amid off-field issues that became public two games into the year.

While so much attention – rightfully so – is being given to new quarterback Aidan Chiles, the most important elements to potential success for the Spartans this fall will be in the trenches on both sides of the ball.

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The reworked offensive line will feature two transfers in center Tanner Miller and left guard Luke Newman. Up-and-coming guards in Kristian “Big Dooley” Phillips and Gavin Broscious, along with holdover Brandon Baldwin and promising tackles Ashton Lepo and Stanton Ramil, make seven linemen who new position coach Jim Michalczik is banking on to improve an MSU run game that has sputtered since 2018. But the inexperience and lack of depth beyond them after losing six linemen to outbound transfer in the offseason makes the margin for error and injury razor thin, enough so that Michalczik knocked on a wooden podium when asked how much good health up front predicates success on offense.

Portal attrition also dented the defensive line depth, with starting defensive tackles Simeon Barrow and Derrick Harmon among the six departing. Smith and his assistants feverishly mined the portal to bring in veterans on both the interior and edge who they believe can help restore the defensive identity Dantonio carved out over 13 seasons but that progressively vanished during four seasons under Tucker’s staff.

And then there is Chiles, an 18-year-old with 91 collegiate snaps and no starting experience but a world of tantalizing potential he showed last year and since arriving at MSU in January. He followed Smith from Oregon State and was one of four captains revealed on Monday night who arrived to the program via the portal in the past two seasons. The others are Miller (another Oregon State ex-pat), new linebacker Jordan Turner (Wisconsin) and second-year running back Nate Carter (Connecticut). Defensive tackle Maverick Hansen, who returns for a sixth season to finish the collegiate career he started at MSU, is the fifth captain.

The Spartans have 61 new players on the roster who weren’t there a year ago. It is simply part of college football in 2024, though, thanks to the portal, free movement of transfers and high-dollar Name, Image and Likeness deals. That alters the timeline of molding players into a cohesive unit and meshing their personalities together without the years of sweat equity beside one another.

That identity nowadays gets forged as the games begin. FAU, despite going just 4-8 last fall, is in Year 2 of its rebuild under former Texas head coach Tom Herman. Herman spent three seasons running Ohio State’s offense under Urban Meyer from 2012-14, which included a Big Ten title game loss to MSU in 2013. Don’t expect this game, along with the second-week conference opener at Maryland, to be open-book quizzes for the Spartans – both will be tough tests to start the Smith Era.

And they will shape the grading curve for Smith as the new chapter in MSU football begins.

Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.

Subscribe to the "Spartan Speak" podcast for new episodes weekly on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or anywhere you listen to podcasts. And catch all of our podcasts and daily voice briefing at freep.com/podcasts.

For openers: Owls

Matchup: Michigan State (4-8 in 2023) vs. Florida Atlantic (4-8 in 2023).

Kickoff: 7 p.m. Aug. 30; Spartan Stadium, East Lansing.

TV/radio: Big Ten Network; WJR-AM (760).

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State basketball learns a lot in Spain while football crams