EAST LANSING – Michigan State basketball passed its first major test of the season.
That makes 11 straight wins, a perfect start to Big Ten play, and a significant showing of strength and resolve to come back in the second half.
The 12th-ranked Spartans got nine critical second-half points from Frankie Fidler, and Tre Holloman hit two free throws with 5.4 seconds to play to ice their 80-78 victory over No. 20 Illinois on Sunday afternoon at Breslin Center.
Holloman had 17 points, and both Fidler and Coen Carr scored 11 as MSU (16-2, 7-0 Big Ten) extended its longest streak since winning 13 straight in the 2018-19 season.
“We just want to keep winning, keep it rolling, and we just take it one game at a time,” said senior Jaden Akins, who scored a critical driving layup with 1:13 to play. “We knew this was a big one for us, because they’re one of the top teams in the conference, and we’re happy to get the win.”
MSU coach Tom Izzo got a ton of all-around contributions, including nine points and six assists from Jeremy Fears Jr. and eight points and six rebounds from Jaxon Kohler. All 10 Spartans who played scored at least four points and grabbed at least two rebounds.
“I’d say, all in all, that was our best 40 minutes of the year, even though we had some lows,” Izzo said, adding he felt his team righted things after a wobbly first 6-7 minutes. “I thought we stuck to the game plan.”
Will Riley scored 16 of his 19 points in the first for Illinois (13-5, 5-3), but he went 1-for-5 in the second half. Kylan Boswell had 13 points and nine rebounds, but he committed a critical turnover with 5.9 seconds to play when his no-look pass to Tomislav Ivišić zipped out of bounds before Holloman’s free throws. Ivišić also scored 13 with four rebounds and five assists, while Morez Johnson Jr. added 11 points and six boards.
The Spartans rendered Illinois star Kasparas Jakučionis a nonfactor, holding the freshman to three points on 1-for-3 shooting in just 8 minutes and 34 seconds of court time. The 6-foot-6 Lithuanian fouled out with 6:39 to play.
“I love the way (the Illini) play. But damn it, I love the way we play, too,” Izzo said. “We came back. We had some times we could have got down, so I think it showed a little character.”
Stopping the star
Entering Sunday, Izzo’s big mission was to get his defense to stop Jakučionis. The Spartans found one way to do that — by parking the freshman phenom on the Illini bench.
MSU got Jakučionis into early foul trouble, with Fears drawing the Illinois star’s second just 2:54 into the game and forcing coach Brad Underwood to quickly sit his star, who entered averaging a team-leading 16.7 points with 5.4 rebounds and 5.4 assists.
It actually worked to the Illini’s benefit. Riley came off the bench red hot, scoring in almost every possible way in his first 7:40 stint replacing Jakučionis. The 6-foot-8 forward from Kitchner, Ontario, scored 16 of 18 points in one stretch as Illinois built its lead to as many as 10 points with 13:05 left in the half.
“I thought we handled a lot of tough situations today pretty well,” Underwood said of Jakučionis’ foul trouble. “The best player in the game played eight minutes. You saw just a little bit of what he could do when he was in. He just controlled the whole game with pick-and-rolls and passes. And unfortunately, today, he didn’t get to play. But Will Riley, I thought, kind of broke out of what he’s been in.”
Just as the Spartans looked like they might be in some trouble, Izzo went to his most athletic lineup and got strong minutes and effort from Kohler, Holloman and Xavier Booker. That group in particular, along with Akins and Fears, clamped down defensively and closed the half on a 17-5 burst over the final 7:19, a stretch started with a Booker 3-pointer and an acrobatic three-point play by Akins. Kohler’s tip-in with 4 seconds left sent the two teams into the locker room tied 36-36.
Holloman led the way with 11 first-half points, and the Spartans held Riley scoreless over the final 10:08 of the half after his outburst. But MSU struggled on the boards against Illinois, the nation’s best in rebounding margin and on the defensive glass. The Illini’s 11 offensive rebounds did not prove problematic, though, as the Spartans limited them to just six second-chance points. MSU also got outrebounded 25-17 overall and outscored 24-16 in the paint.
A close finish
A back-and-forth first few minutes of the second half led to the same circumstance as the opening period for Illinois.
Jakučionis again took himself out of the game with foul trouble, picking up his third less than 2:30 in and then a fourth on a loose ball rebound with 16:34 to play. Only this time, Riley did not replace the offense lost.
That allowed MSU to slowly creep out to a lead, starting with a 3-pointer from Fidler with 11:05 remaining that sparked an 18-9 run. The big moments came after Fears fouled Tre White on a 3-point attempt, and the Illinois guard made just 1 of 3 at the line. Akins collected the rebound on the miss of the third attempt, got it to Fears to start the break, and the redshirt freshman lobbing it to Carr for an alley-oop that escalated the Breslin Center energy and noise level. Then Fears slithered through traffic and drew contact on a midair layup and finished off the three-point play at the line, where MSU had some issues all day.
The other big offensive moment came when Fidler used his body control to elevate for a jumper and got Jakučionis to foul out with 6:39 to play. The Illini guard had started to take over in his final 58-second stint after returning with a three-point play and assist before picking up his fifth.
“When we realized he had two or three, we wanted to go at him,” Fidler said of Jakučionis. “So we kind of made it an emphasis on the bench — ‘He’s in foul trouble, let’s go at him, let’s be aggressive towards him and try to make him pick up more fouls.’ “
Back-to-back layups by Carr and Holloman made it 72-65 and prompted Underwood to call timeout with 5:16 to play, and it appeared the Illini coach picked up a critical technical foul with 3:18 after an MSU timeout to go that gave the Spartans’ two points on Fidler free throws, however the coach said after the game that it was a bench technical.
The Illini closed within a point on a Johnson layup and free throw in the final two minutes, but Akins hit a tough leaning layup with 1:13 left and Holloman made his two free throws after the Boswell turnover. Illinois had one final chance, and Boswell missed a free throw intentionally, but his follow shot with a second to play was ruled illegal as it went over the backboard.
On the ensuing inbound pass, Fears launched the ball 3/4 the length of the court to Cooper to run out the clock.
“A win like that is just a big momentum booster,” Fears said. “It just really shows the way we’re together. We’ve grown a lot.”
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.
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