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Blake Baumgartner, ESPN Staff Writer
Michigan State redshirt freshman quarterback Katin Houser is going to enter the transfer portal once it opens on Dec. 4, he told ESPN’s Pete Thamel.
Houser, who played in 11 games and started Michigan State’s final seven games this season, will have three years of eligibility remaining.
He supplanted redshirt junior Noah Kim as the Spartans’ starting quarterback against Rutgers on Oct. 14 and finished with 1,132 passing yards with six touchdowns and five interceptions.
The 6-foot, 215-pound Houser was an unranked four-star quarterback out of St. John Bosco High School (California).
On the way to finishing 4-8 this season, Michigan State’s offense struggled mightily. Its offense tallied 15.9 points per game (last in the Big Ten), averaged 288.5 total yards per game (13th in the Big Ten) and its passing offense only averaged 200.0 yards a game (10th in the Big Ten).
Kim and Sam Leavitt, a true freshman, are the two remaining quarterbacks on the roster for newly installed coach Jonathan Smith.
Smith was officially hired away from Oregon State on Saturday, where he went 34-35 in six seasons at his alma mater and went a combined 25-13 in his last three seasons in Corvallis.
Smith, a former college quarterback who led the Beavers to a program-best 11-1 record in 2000 — including a 41-9 rout of Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl — is known for his work with quarterbacks and will be looking to revitalize an offense that scored only 191 points this season.
