Michigan State at No. 22 Illinois: Three In The Key Preview & Prediction

No. 22 Illinois wraps up its two-game homestand on Tuesday night, hosting Michigan State at State Farm Center (8 p.m. CT, ESPN).

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- After suffering a 20-point loss to Michigan State, Illinois guard Ayo Dosunmu stood with his back against the wall in the bowels of the Breslin Center and made a very poignant statement about why his team lost.

“We’re going to keep it closed in the locker room but there’s a lot of reasons why we lost but all of them can be fixed,” Dosunmu said.

And was it simply that Illinois only made 3 of 28 shots from 3-point range? Not according to the Illini star player.

“That’s a reason why we lost but not ‘the’ reason we lost,” Dosunmu said.

After recent losses to Miami (Fla.), Missouri and now the team’s first blowout loss of the season, something was rotten inside the Illini locker room and it was going to take a leader to say something, do something and make clear what was going to be expected from this moment on. Not long after that loss, a players-only meeting was called to voice all of these concerns from then an Illini team that was 9-5 and had lost two of its first three Big Ten Conference games while staring at the wrong side of the NCAA Tournament at-large bubble. It was in this meeting that leaders such as Dosunmu voiced his displeasure with the direction a season, in which he turned down the NBA Draft to return to Champaign for what he called “unfinished business”, was going.

“We just had a heart-to-heart conversation with the guys,” Dosunmu said. “That’s all I can say. We knew some stuff had to be changed and even with the losses to Iowa and Maryland, the stuff has been changed. I feel like now the locker room is good. We’re all good. Now it’s about executing.”

Whether the meeting happened with his permission is a bit irrelevant when talking about something that happened on Jan. 2 but Illinois head coach Brad Underwood said such a meeting would be fine with him “if it’s the right players” doing the talking and leading in the meeting.

“That’s what this is all about,” Underwood said. “This is their team. We, as coaches, can help guide and mold them but this is their team. This is their friends for life and the memories they’re going to create so I’m a big fan of those (players-only meetings) and it was probably needed at that time. It’s kudos to those guys (who called it) for stepping up and handling that situation.”

Players-only meetings are usually the buzzwords that are followed by a long losing stretch and more frustration. Not so much for the Illini. Seven straight wins later, which included brilliant Dosunmu’s closing performances at Wisconsin, at Purdue and at Michigan, Illinois flipped the script on its overall program relevance, NCAA Tournament at-large chances and where it stood in the power structure of the Big Ten Conference.

Illinois now finds itself in a two-game losing streak against Top 25 programs (at Iowa, vs. Maryland) and arguably has a must-win scenario against a Michigan State program that has fallen from preseason No. 1 to unranked after a three-game losing streak.

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Game 24: Michigan State at No. 22 Illinois

Date/Time/Place: Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2020: 8 p.m. CST, State Farm Center, Champaign, Ill.

Capacity: 15,544

Records: Illinois 16-7, 8-4 in Big Ten; 12-21, 7-13 in Big Ten Conference in 2018-19. Michigan State 16-8, 8-5 in Big Ten; 32-7, 16-4 in Big Ten Conference in 2018-19.

Line: Michigan State by 1.5

Series notes: Michigan State leads 62-60. MSU leads just 17-15 dating back to 2001, and Illinois is just 7-8 against MSU over the last 15 games. The road team has had its share of success in this series as well. Since 2002, Illinois has been victorious five times in East Lansing – including consecutive wins in 2014 and 2015 – while Michigan State has recorded six wins in Champaign. Illinois defeated No. 9 Michigan State last season in Champaign during an ‘Orange Out’ to record its first win over a top-10 team in six seasons.

TV: ESPN - Rece Davis (PBP), Dan Dakich (Analyst), Molly McGrath (Sideline)

Radio (Illinois): Brian Barnhart (PBP), Deon Thomas (analyst) - The broadcast can be heard live on TuneIn online radio, Sirius/XM 105 and at FightingIllini.com.

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Before every game of the 2019-20 season, we take a look at three things you’ll want to watch for after the tip.

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1) Who can get out in transition first and most often?

Nobody will be walking the basketball up the Breslin Center floor tonight. This is a matchup between two teams that certainly want to push the tempo as fast as possible. According to hoop-math.com, Illinois gets 32 percent of its shots in transition and 32 percent of its shots in the first 10 seconds of the shot clock.

And Michigan State is faster.

The Spartans get 35 percent of its shots in transition and within the first 10 seconds of the shot clock.

“They’re a team that is like a bunch of pit bulls trying to rip a tire apart,” Underwood said before playing East Lansing this season. “They’re one of the elite transition teams, not just in our league but in the country.”

In the 20-point loss to the Spartans, the first 21 points of the game were scored by three total players (Cassius Winston, Xavier Tillman and Ayo Dosunmu) and mostly out of both teams running the ball up the floor.

Illinois has to get stops and be able to turn Michigan State over early to create an atmosphere for the crowd to get involved similarly to how the Maryland game opened on Friday night.

2) Kofi Cockburn has to stay out of foul trouble

In the first meeting, Cockburn was limited to just seven total minutes in the first half and 20 minutes in the contest because of foul trouble. This led to Cockburn only providing five points and nine rebounds in the 20-point loss and Illinois forcing Jermaine Hamlin into early emergency playing time. Michigan State doesn’t have the size to handle the 7-foot, 290-pound center on a consistent basis but that doesn’t mean the freshman won’t take himself out of the equation if he picks up cheap fouls on either end of the floor. This habit for Cockburn has been a problem for him over the last few weeks and can’t be tonight if Illinois has any chance to establish an interior presence on Michigan State’s bigs (Tillman, Marcus Bingham and Thomas Kithier).

3) Can Illinois make perimeter shots?

Over the last two games, Illinois has been unable to shoot over a zone. No need to worry about that tonight, as Michigan State does just fine on that end of the floor without going to a matchup zone. Through 24 games this year, the Spartans are first in the Big Ten, and No. 7 in the country, in field goal percentage defense at 37.6 percent. In East Lansing over a month ago, Illinois connected on just 3 of 28 from 3-point range. The key here may be junior guard Trent Frazier. He is averaging 12.3 points and shooting 45.9 percent from 3-point range while averaging 2.8 made threes over the last six games, scoring in double figures five times. However, he was shut down to a season-long three points against Maryland Friday night and seems to be the flagship of whether Illinois can make perimeter shots early on and therefore, give the pick-and-roll game some degree of likelihood of working well late in a contest.

Prediction: Michigan State 70, Illinois 68

In the 79-74 win over MSU last season at State Farm Center, Preseason Big Ten Player of the Year and first-team All-American Cassius Winson had nine turnovers. Even in 2018 during a 13-point win, Winston had eight turnovers in Champaign. These pair of games represent the single-game career-high marks for the lead guard who represents the beginning, middle and end of what Michigan State is about on the offensive end. Can Illinois really expect Winston to have a third straight terrible game in Champaign? I have to doubt it.

This game can be broken down simply by understanding that everything Illinois needs to do in order to win a basketball game is something Michigan State has to get done as well. This is the second straight team where a veteran point guard, who likely won’t be rattled by a rowdy home crowd, comes to State Farm Center desperate for a win. Is Illinois ready to win a game like this? Maryland believed it wasn’t and was proven correct. I’m not ready to bet against Michigan State in this type of situation either. Winston, Tillman and a big performance from freshman Malik Hall allows MSU to escape with a win.