Champaign, Ill. — It’s taken Goran Suton five years to get a share of a Big Ten Championship.
And while a share of the title is all well and good, excuse the senior center if he and his teammates want the whole thing for themselves.
MSU claims share of Big Ten title
The Orange Krush, the Illinois student cheering section, performs a ritual dance during Sunday’s 74-66 Spartan victory at Assembly Hall in Champaign, Ill. Despite the Orange Krush’s best efforts, MSU won, clinching them a share of the Big Ten title.
“It feels good — actually it feels great,” said Suton, who scored eight points and grabbed 10 rebounds in the MSU men’s basketball team’s 74-66 win against Illinois at Assembly Hall. “But we want to be selfish. We want the whole thing and we don’t want to share it with anybody.”
The No. 9 Spartans (23-5 overall, 13-3 Big Ten) accomplished one of its main preseason goals on Sunday, clinching a share of the 2008-09 Big Ten Championship with the win against Illinois (23-7, 11-6 ).
The win gives the program its first Big Ten Championship since 2000-01.
“I’m ecstatic,” MSU head coach Tom Izzo said of his fifth Big Ten Championship. “It’s always tough to win on the road in this league, but to win in a place that I have so much respect for in how they play, how they act and how they are … that made it even sweeter to be able to go in and win under that kind of adversity.”
If the Spartans win just one of their final two games — either Tuesday against Indiana (6-22, 1-15) or March 8 against Purdue (22-7, 11-5) — they will be outright conference champions for the first time since the 1999-2000 season.
“It’s definitely something I’ve been working toward for five years and it’s here now,” Suton said. “The biggest thing is just worrying about Indiana now.”
Sophomore guard Kalin Lucas led all scorers with 18 points, while junior forward Raymar Morgan (14 points) and freshman forward Delvon Roe (10) also scored in double figures.
Mike Tisdale (15), Mike Davis (13), Chester Frazier (10) and Demetri McCamey (10) scored in double figures for Illinois.
After ending the first half on a 12-6 run to take a 37-30 halftime lead, the Spartans scored the first six points of the second half to extend their lead to 11. The Fighting Illini spent the second half pounding the ball inside to Tisdale and forcing Suton and Roe to pick up their fourth and third personal fouls, respectively.
A 3-pointer by the Illini’s Trent Meacham cut MSU’s lead to 58-56, before Illini guard Jeff Jordan stripped freshman guard Korie Lucious near half court and went in for the layup to tie the game at 58 with 7:19 remaining.
The Illini didn’t hit another field goal until Frazier hit a pull-up 3-pointer with 33 seconds to go.
Much of the credit went to seldom-used senior center Idong Ibok, who Izzo admitted to putting in the game in a “panic decision.”
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“It was tougher” to get position on Ibok, said Tisdale, who didn’t score the rest of the way. “Ibok’s pretty big, but we were still looking for it (inside).”
From there, Lucas scored four straight points and senior guard Travis Walton hit a baseline jumper to give MSU a five-point lead as the Spartans pulled away.
MSU planned to travel straight from Champaign, Ill., to Bloomington, Ind. Sunday night for its game against the Hoosiers at 7 p.m. on Tuesday.
In Bloomington, the Spartans hope to lock up the out-right Big Ten title.
“It means a lot, but a ‘share’ is what you said,” Walton said of the team’s next step. “We want to go down to Indiana and hopefully play a pretty good game like we did today and win it outright.”
Correction: The page 1A story “MSU claims share of Big Ten title” (SN 3/2) should have said this is Tom Izzo’s fifth Big Ten championship.
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