Michigan St. shows Illinois who's boss in Big Ten
EAST LANSING, Mich. - There's Big Ten basketball. Then there's the Big Ten's Big One.
Illinois bolted to a 4-0 league start against teams that belong to the Big Ten.
Then the Illini visited the league's other 4-0 team Saturday. Turns out there's an exclusive club to which no one else in the Big Ten belongs.
No. 7 Michigan State wound up with a 73-63 victory over the Illini, but the Spartans owned a commanding 23-point lead when the competition essentially ended with eight minutes left before a raucous sellout crowd at the Breslin Center.
Reigning Big Ten player of the year Kalin Lucas scored 15 of his game-high 20 points after halftime, while Raymar Morgan delivered 14 points and 10 rebounds off the bench for the league's standard-bearer.
"We beat the bottom four teams and there's nothing wrong with that. A win is a win," said Illinois senior forward Dominique Keller. "But you jump from that to the No. 1 team, it's a little different."
No, a lot different.
Illinois held a 24-18 lead with 6:21 left in the first half, but Michigan State went on runs of 11-0, 10-0 and 11-0 over the next 14 minutes to turn the national CBS telecast into a channel-changer.
"That was the difference in the game," Illini coach Bruce Weber said. "You can't let good teams like that have runs like that. We had to have somebody step up and make a couple of plays."
Where were Illinois' playmakers? Seven-foot-1 junior center Mike Tisdale, who entered the game averaging 20.3 points and 8.8 rebounds in Big Ten play, finished with 2 points and 1 rebound in 19 minutes due to foul trouble.
Junior point guard Demetri McCamey scored 5 points in the opening 48 seconds, but he fouled out with 15 points, 5 assists and 4 turnovers as Michigan State clamped down on him.
He said the Illini fortunes changed when they stopped moving and cutting on offense - reverting to the recent Indiana and Penn State games in which McCamey and Tisdale did the bulk of the scoring.
"I think it's more of just watching me dribble and going around things and relying just on a couple of players to score," McCamey said, "instead of back-screening and moving and cutting and letting everybody be effective on the offensive end.
"I came out and scored two quick baskets and 'Tizzy' got in foul trouble, so people were probably looking at me to penetrate and dish more and probably just waiting. And Michigan State, they sat in the lane and made me pass."
Junior Mike Davis tried to pick up the slack for Illinois (12-6, 4-1) and hit two early baskets, but he finished 4 of 15 from the field.
Freshmen guards D.J. Richardson and Brandon Paul combined to shoot 3 of 19 from the field - and just 1 of 12 from 3-point range - while playing in their most hostile atmosphere to date.
If lightly used freshman forward Tyler Griffey hadn't stepped forward with a career-high 12 points and 7 rebounds, Michigan State (15-3, 5-0) would've enjoyed its romp sooner.
Next up for the Illini? A Purdue team, ranked No. 4 one week ago, steaming over 3 consecutive defeats.
"We talked about we were playing the best here this stretch in the league, and see if we were ready for it," Weber said. "Obviously today, we weren't.
"Now you go home, you're going to have to deal with a team that plays just as hard, if not harder, and maybe, probably, more physical."