Michigan State basketball can hush bracketology doubts with win over No. 12 Illinois
EAST LANSING — Perception sometimes aligns with timing.
A month ago, Michigan State basketball was coming off a devastating 14-point loss at Northwestern, one that felt much worse with how thoroughly it got dominated on the road. Things felt as bleak as they had all season, just a week into the new year.
Four days later, the Spartans visited top-10 Illinois and took a six-point lead early in the second half, watching it evaporate before eventually falling by three. However, that narrow Jan. 11 loss in Champagne felt like incremental improvement for Tom Izzo’s team, even as it dropped to 1-4 in the Big Ten.
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The fight MSU showed at Illinois paid dividends moving forward, as the Spartans pulled things together to win five of their next six games and push back toward the top of the league. At least, until Tuesday, when they blew a nine-point lead in the second half at Minnesota, crumbling late.
MSU's loss to a fellow middle-of-the-pack opponent shouldn't have been that upsetting. But the 59-56 defeat left Izzo and his players looking far more distressed than they appeared leaving Illinois.
“It's a common thing that's been happening all year to us,” senior Tyson Walker said Tuesday in Minneapolis. “You gotta get better at it.”
Their next chance won't be against a middle-of-the-pack foe, though.
The 12th-ranked Illini visit Breslin Center for a 2 p.m. Saturday tip (CBS), a game Izzo needs for his team for a variety of reasons.
∎ MSU (14-9, 6-6 Big Ten) continues to seek a marquee victory despite having won 10 of its last 14. The Spartans squandered the chance for one in the 71-68 loss at Illinois (17-5, 8-3), and their only other opportunity for a signature win over the final eight regular-season games will be March 2 at No. 2 Purdue, a place where Izzo hasn’t won in a decade (since Feb. 20, 2014).
∎ There is the quest for a double-bye in the Big Ten tournament. MSU enters the weekend in a three-way tie for sixth place with Indiana and Penn State, where the Spartans play Wednesday. The top four teams in the league won’t begin play until March 15 in Minneapolis at the conference tourney, while the bottom four open March 13 and the other eight teams start play the following day.
∎ And there is the larger goal of ensuring Izzo extends his NCAA-record streak to 26 straight tournament appearances, already the longest in history by one coach at a single school. CBS Sports analyst Jerry Palm listed MSU as one of the last four teams out of his bracket projection on Friday afternoon, while ESPN’s Joe Lunardi had the Spartans firmly in his field on Friday morning, but only as a No. 8 seed. MSU currently is in the field for 93% of the projections, according the data compiled by BracketMatrix.com.
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The Spartans are No. 24 in the NCAA's NET rankings as of Friday. MSU is just 2-7 against Quad 1 opponents and 2-2 in Quad 2 games this season. That’s far from a sure-thing NCAA résumé and a long way from the Spartans' preseason No. 4 ranking, supposedly befitting a team good enough to give Izzo his best chance at a second national title.
But it’s the reality of the up-and-down path the Spartans have traveled heading into the final weeks of the regular season.
“Does that put more of a sense of urgency?” Izzo said. “I think there was already a sense of urgency.”
Scouting the Illini
The Illini moved past No. 9 Wisconsin into second place in the standings, 1½ games behind the Boilermakers, by winning three straight and five of their last six. That includes four of five since the return of Terrence Shannon Jr.
“We know how talented they are. We know what they have — and they definitely have scoring across the board,” said senior point guard A.J. Hoggard, who combined with Walker and Jaden Akins for 46 of the Spartans’ 68 points in the first meeting with Illinois. “We gotta be on top of our A-game in everything that we do. … We gotta be ready for it and gotta withstand the test.”
The Spartans escaped facing Shannon the first time around. The 6-foot-6, 225-pound fifth-year swingman missed six games after he was suspended from all team activities Dec. 27 due to ongoing rape allegations stemming from an early September incident in Lawrence, Kansas. Shannon was granted an injunction in federal court to return to the team for Illinois' home win over Rutgers on Jan. 21
Shannon has averaged 16.2 points and 3 rebounds per game in his five games back from suspension, and his 20 points per game this season rank third in the Big Ten.
“They're different. They're different, mostly in transition,” Izzo said of the Illini with Shannon. “He just puts his head down. He's a locomotive on the tracks. He just puts his head down and goes.”
Shannon is averaging nearly seven free-throw attempts in his six Big Ten games, making 80.5% at the line. The Illini make 74.1% of their free throws as a team for the season; they rank fourth in the nation in rebounding (43.2) and ninth in rebounding margin (9.8).
“It's his explosiveness to the rim that gets people in foul trouble,” Izzo said of Shannon. “And all of a sudden, your helping, you're getting knocked down. And if he misses, two or three guys are getting the rebound.”
Three others average double-figure scoring for long, lanky Illinois: 6-6 guard Marcus Domask (15.7 points per game), 6-10 forward Coleman Hawkins (12) and 6-8 forward Quincy Guerrier (11), who leads the team with 7.5 rebounds a game. Sophomore guard Ty Rodgers, a 6-6 guard from Saginaw who starred at Grand Blanc, averages 7 points and 5.7 boards but had 15 points in the first meeting with MSU.
Izzo said combining Rodgers and Shannon has elevated the potency of Illinois’ ability to get out in transition. That, he said, makes it imperative for his defenders to maintain MSU’s defensive system integrity and follow assignments — an inability to do so that proved costly at Minnesota.
“It's going to be a helter-skelter game. You're gonna see a break like you haven't seen since we were here in 2000,” Izzo said. “It is a very good break with even more athletes and more guys that can handle the ball. With Rogers, and of course Shannon, you have two of the elite athletes in the whole country. And they're bringing it at you.
“I think you do gotta be disciplined. You gotta get back. If A.J. forgets to get back, if Tyson gets to get back (on defense), we're in trouble. We gotta build a wall. That's what we got to do, that's what we've worked on.”
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State basketball seeks marquee win at home vs. Illinois
