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Michigan State Basketball: 3 takeaways from massive win over No. 5 Illinois

By Connor Muldowney

Feb 23, 2021; East Lansing, Michigan, USA; Michigan State Spartans guard Joshua Langford (1) and guard Rocket Watts (2) celebrate during the first half against the Illinois Fighting Illini at Jack Breslin Student Events Center. Mandatory Credit: Tim Fuller-USA TODAY Sports
Feb 23, 2021; East Lansing, Michigan, USA; Michigan State Spartans guard Joshua Langford (1) and guard Rocket Watts (2) celebrate during the first half against the Illinois Fighting Illini at Jack Breslin Student Events Center. Mandatory Credit: Tim Fuller-USA TODAY Sports /
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Michigan State basketball picked up a big win over the fifth-ranked team in the country on Tuesday night. What’d we learn from this one?

Do you feel that? March is coming. You know what that means? Yup, Michigan State is putting up a fight. The Spartans, who looked dead in the water a week ago, are now riding a two-game winning streak and have added two Quad 1 wins to their NCAA Tournament resume over the past week.

Beating Illinois on Tuesday night and dominating from basically the opening tip until the final buzzer was an eye-opener for anyone who doubted this team.

This was the first time the Spartans beat a ranked team since taking down Rutgers over a month ago. This should have been a double-digit win as well, but a meaningless steal and score with no time left by Illinois made it an 81-72 win for MSU.

The Spartans came to play and looked the best they have all season. This was arguably the most complete performance from this team in 2020-21.

What’d we learn from this massive win over Illinois?

3. You have to give MSU’s bigs some credit

Michigan State went into this game with a tall task: lock down Kofi Cockburn in the post.

While that’s not entirely possible to do for anyone, the Spartans did a good job on him, holding him to 13 points and six rebounds on 5-for-11 shooting. Even more impressive was the fact that MSU did it with Julius Marble and Thomas Kithier fouling out and Mady Sissoko being ejected with a questionable flagrant 2 call in the second half.

On top of that Marcus Bingham Jr. had four fouls and there were still about five minutes left in the game. So basically MSU was one foul away from being without a big to guard Kofi.

These guys held their own all game long and didn’t get bullied like I kind of expected them to do and even if it did take a 3-for-11 free throw shooting performance to lock him down, they had the right strategy. Tom Izzo definitely won the coaching battle here and guys like Kithier, Sissoko, Marble and Bingham Jr. all showed serious toughness.

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