Illinois Basketball: 4 keys for the Illini to beat Michigan State

Illinois basketball continues their six-game journey in 15 days with a matchup against Michigan State on Tuesday night.

The Spartans have started the 2020-21 campaign slowly but have begun to figure some things out as of late. Illinois can’t look past Michigan State or they could rise up and bite us in the butt. There are some keys to taking down the Spartans, though.

Here are four keys for the Illini to beat Michigan State.

1. Keep Kofi in the game

Kofi Cockburn is obviously one of the best players on the Illinois basketball team. He needs to be on the floor for the Illini if they want to breeze by some of these Big Ten foes.

Despite having an unusually bad record at 11-9 overall and 5-9 in the Big Ten, the Michigan State Spartans are still dangerous. They just took down Indiana in Bloomington, and they have won three out of their last five contests.

One thing the Spartans do particularly well is rebound the basketball. They pull down an average of 38.4 rebounds per game, which ranks No. 43 in the nation. Good rebounding teams have been a pain for the Illini this season too.

Illinois has five losses on their resumé, and most of them are against teams that can rebound well. Baylor is currently No. 69 in the nation in rebounding. Ohio State is No. 93 in rebounding. Missouri is No. 106 in rebounding. Rutgers is in the top half in the nation in rebounding at No. 141. The only outlier is Maryland, who is No. 249 in rebounding.

Even in the tough wins against Indiana and Nebraska, both of which were in overtime, Illinois went up against the Hoosiers who are No. 175 in rebounding and the Cornhuskers who are No. 96 in rebounding.

As long as Kofi is on the floor, Illinois should be able to outrebound just about any team in the country. Keep him out of foul trouble and engaged in the game, and we should be okay against Michigan State.