DotComp: Lorenzo Guess’s hiring as Michigan Sttae’s new basketball strength coach is a championship move
East Lansing, Mich. – Lorenzo Guess has quietly become a stalwart figure in the Michigan State athletic department, and his impact on championships could grow greater in the near future.
Two weeks ago at Michigan State football’s prospects camp, I ran into former Spartan quaterback Bill Burke. Burke, who helped lead Michigan State to a 10-2 record, a Citrus Bowl upset victory over Florida in 2000 and out-dueled Tom Brady and Drew Henson in a victory over Michigan in 1999, lives and works in the East Lansing area, follows Michigan State football closely, but is a bit on the reserved side and hasn’t been in or around the Michigan State football building in quite some time.
When Burke made his return to the football building to watch his son participate in MSU’s camp, there weren’t many faces at the complex that were around when Burke was a player. In fact he told me there were only two – head football coach Mel Tucker, who was a graduate assistant in 1998 and 1999, and Lorenzo Guess.
On Thursday, we learned that Guess has been tapped to become the new strength and conditioning coach for the Michigan State basketball team. Guess had spent 12 years as an assistant strength coach for the Spartan football program and was promoted last year to Director of Athletic Performance.
As an athlete for the Spartans, Guess was a part of Michigan State’s rising football and basketball programs in the late 1990s and early 2000s. His ties to those teams – from Burke and Plaxico Burress to Robaire Smith, Antonio Smith and Mateen Cleaves – runs deep, which means his connection to some of the great names in recent Michigan State sports history are vast.
He was a huge blue chip recruit, coming out of Wayne Memorial High School in the mid-1990s. He was a national Top 100 prospect in football who – like Cleaves – starred as a quarterback at the high school ranks and had designs on playing QB for the Spartans. Tom Izzo and Nick Saban recruited him in combination, the way they recruited Cleaves. But Guess would be a football-first athlete, unlike Cleaves.
Guess quickly moved from quarterback to safety while with the Spartans. It took him four years to break into the playing group, but he had the dedication and commitment to stick with it, while also moonlighting as a reserve for the Michigan State basketball team, becoming part of Final Four squad in 1999.
He was close to a 4.0 student in high school and Academic All-Big Ten at Michigan State. For all that he accomplished academically and athletically as a Spartan, and the way he helped represent two teams at the university, I remember being angry when he told me in the early 2000s that he hadn’t been accepted to graduate school at Michigan State. I was angry that the admissions department didn’t take into account the things he did outside of the classroom for two multi-million dollar entities in Michigan State football and basketball, as a player and basically a spokesperson. That should have carried some value.
“Does Izzo know about this?” I remember asking Guess when I heard that news.
I felt like someone should have been able to drive home to the admissions board all of the things Guess had done during his time at Michigan State as an undergrad, garnering a level of public achievement that most alums won’t attain in a lifetime.
Guess smiled and shrugged. You could tell he had plans to achieve his goals one way or another.
Undeterred, Guess received his master’s in business administration from Tiffin University in 2007. While at Tiffin, he worked as strength coach and secondary coach for Tiffin’s football team in 2005. He held the same roles at Kentucky State in 2007.
He had stops at Cincinnati, Alcorn State (2008) and South Florida, where he was assistant strength and conditioning coach for the USF basketball team under former Michigan State assistant Stan Heath.
Showing amazing versatility, he transitioned back to the football coaching ranks where he served as tight ends coach at the University of Cincinnati under Brian Kelly in 2009. Guess had previously spent one year at Cincinnati in 2006 as a member of the strength and conditioning staff while finishing his master’s at Tiffin.
When Kelly took the head coaching job at Notre Dame in 2010, he brought Guess with him for two years as an assistant director of strength and conditioning.
It takes a special type of Spartan to leave a job with Notre Dame football in order to return to East Lansing for a lateral move, but that’s what Guess did when he accepted a job on Ken Mannie’s strength staff at Michigan State in 2012.
Guess has been a fixture at the football building ever since. When Tucker was hired as head coach, a lot of people were ushered in and out of the program. But Tucker retained Guess.
Guess has padded his resumé with more academic achievements, and broadened his scope of contributions to the athletic department.
In recent years, Guess served as the Director of Player Enrichment for Michigan State football, which included coordinating and supervising the “Overtime” player development program. Guess worked closely with Director of Player Engagement Darien Harris in directing all aspects of player development programming for football.
Guess’s name is a familiar one for Michigan State sports fans, but the level of his energy and achievements might go unnoticed by the average Spartan supporter. That should no longer be the case.
His move from the football strength and support staff to become Izzo’s strength coach might not be viewed as a promotion. But as Izzo sharpens his focus on winning the program’s third National Championship, he has tapped a capable lieutenant to oversee his team’s re-commitment to the weight room and conditioning.
Izzo yearns to have a muscular team again. His teams have fallen off a little bit in that area in recent seasons, and when you consider that some players like AJ Hoggard and Pierre Brooks have been less than lean at times in the past two years, it makes sense that this is an area of Spartan basketball that could use a reset.
Izzo sought a new direction for his team’s strength and conditioning. And he had a guy in mind, right across Shaw Lane.
“His work with our football program has been outstanding, but he’s also one of the most well-respected strength coaches in the country,” Izzo said of Guess.
Judging by the improved physiques of Mady Sissoko, Jaden Akins and Jaxon Kohler this summer, I suspect that Guess has already had input.
Izzo feels Guess’s hiring is a championship move. Guess plans to help prove him right.
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