There is no need to pretend that Michigan State junior guard Tre Holloman played great in the Spartans’ Elite Eight loss to Auburn.
In fact, it might have been Holloman’s worst game of the entire season; his two points on 0-for-10 shooting was his lowest scoring output since he didn’t score at all in the season opener against Monmouth.
Guess who knows this more than anyone: Tre Holloman.
“I wish I could have shown up for my team today.” Holloman said after the game while needing to make a serious effort to speak through tears. “I’m sorry, man. I just felt like I let my team down.”
“For the 30th year, I'm not sure I've ever been prouder of a team,” MSU head coach Tom Izzo said after the game. “There's so much coach speak and things that go on in programs all over, but these guys gave me everything they had. I drained them of everything. They should take a week off.
"There's nothing left in them and that's kind of the way it was in the locker room. It was a tear-jerking locker room because they knew they spilled it all.”
Really, there is probably no one on Michigan State’s roster that represents the program Izzo has built better than Holloman.
While it’s understandable to argue now that college players should be open to more criticism now that they get paid, this isn't the time nor the place. And really, this isn't the team to use that with.
Either way, the good that Holloman has done for MSU basketball far exceeds the negative.
Assuming he stays for a fourth and final year in East Lansing, he will have the opportunity to have that old-school career arc of improving year after year at just one program, as he went from averaging 1.3 points per game as a freshman, to 5.7 last year, to 9.1 this season.
He already saw his role expand a bit this year, and it certainly will grow for the 2025-26 season with fellow team captain Jaden Akins exiting the program.
Holloman hasn’t complained even a little bit about the adversity he has faced during his journey in East Lansing. He made 16 of his 18 career starts this season, but when it became obvious that freshman Jase Richardson deserved and needed to be in that starting role in early February, Holloman accepted his role as the sixth man with total grace.
“This is a special place,” Holloman said. “I love my teammates. Everybody’s just rooting for one another and we just want to see everybody win.”
Not much more needs to be said about how well he handled being relegated to coming off the bench than the reminder that Holloman provided three of the best moments from this phenomenal season.
The first one is obvious: the beyond half-court shot to win it for MSU at Maryland, back when the Big Ten title was still very much in doubt, in what is probably the best Michigan State basketball moment since 2000.
There’s also, of course, the incident with the Spartan logo involving Michigan’s L.J. Cason and Phat Phat Brooks during Michigan State’s senior night tradition. No matter how one feels about what happened on March 9, there is a reason that Izzo let Holloman kiss the Spartan logo a year early and then said “Hell no!” about if he blamed him for doing what he did on his radio show a day later.
Holloman’s other moment that encapsulates who he is to the program may not be so well-remembered a decade down the line, but there was also that time he got his team fired up by getting in the face of Iowa’s Brock Harding back on March 6. Michigan State had the chance to clinch the Big Ten title outright with a win that night, but found itself down a couple possessions with a little less than 12 minutes to go.
That’s when Holloman got in his face, probably narrowly avoiding a technical, but still firing up his squad. MSU dominated the rest of the way to win and clinch an undisputed conference crown.
“It's not easy to play a lot of people,” Izzo said about the team generally. “It's not easy to accept it as a player, and it's not easy to do it as a coach.
“I felt like it reinvigorated me to realize there's still people out there that care about winning and care about getting better and care about playing for the school they're at and care about playing with the players they're with. In this day and age when it's getting a little more selfish, that is rewarding, that is exciting, that is invigorating.”
There is no way to know which exact players Izzo was thinking of when saying that, but if one were to guess, Holloman is probably high on the list there.
“It was nice to see a bunch of guys that played for each other, played for the university, played for the name on the front along with the name on the back,” Izzo also said.
“That’s my new motto. I always hear coaches say, ‘You know, you should always play for the name on the front, not the name on the back.’ I say to hell with that. You should play for the name on the front and the name on the back.”
That is the type of player Holloman is. Someone who is going to lay everything out there on the court every single time, whether that requires him to shove somebody out of the way, make a hustle play, or lead a fast break.
Pound for pound, there is no one out there that was happier about his teammates’ successes than him — which says a lot, because everyone on this team appeared to share that team-first mentality.
“(MSU basketball alum) Kevin Willis said it best, man — I just got to use what I’m feeling right now as fire for next year,” junior center Carson Cooper said. “This is the best group of guys that I could’ve asked for. I think we surpassed expectations from the beginning of the year, but man, I just love these guys.”
“I just told them that I felt like this group brought the culture of Michigan State back,” Jaden Akins said about what he told everyone after the game. “It’s a step in the right direction, but the returners have got to come back next year, put in the work all offseason and make it happen, get over the hump."
Spartan fans can be assured that Holloman will be one of those players helping lead the charge for Michigan State this offseason.
The roster will certainly be a bit different, even before factoring in the transfer portal. Akins, Szymon Zapala and Frankie Fidler are all gone - and Richardson is perhaps NBA-bound - but with likely returners in Holloman, Jeremy Fears Jr., Coen Carr, Jaxon Kohler, Carson Cooper and others, Michigan State and Izzo have a real opportunity to have a great season next year, too.
So, if you’re going to send Tre Holloman a message, it would be best to make it words of encouragement, not vitriol.
He was already a captain of this team for a reason and will presumably be one again, so be sure to be kind to one of the leaders of such a proud program.
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