“As I saw around the country, (there are) a lot of strange games this time of year — I guess the Illinois-Northwestern one was one that surprised me,” Izzo said Monday at his weekly press conference. “I don’t think there are any upsets anymore. I think everybody is just a pretty good basketball team, (but) some are better than others.”

The Wildcats held the Fighting Illini to a meager 28 percent field-goal shooting clip, but shot just 37 percent on their own. It was enough to get the win, but the Wildcats will have their work cut out for them against the Spartans (15-1, 4-0), who are holding opponents to 38 percent shooting from the field.

To go along with MSU’s suffocating defense, Northwestern is one of the lowest scoring teams in the nation, only putting up 63.7 points per game (325th best in the nation).

Not only is their poor shooting percentage of 40.5 percent keeping their scoring down, but so is their slow-paced, methodical offense implemented by first-year head coach Chris Collins.

In past matchups against the Wildcats, senior guard Keith Appling has been accustomed to guarding Northwestern’s “Princeton offense.” That fast-paced offensive scheme emphasizes movement off the ball and can even wear down a defense as a result, and Appling is glad to see it disappear from their game plan.

“That should be a lot easier for us to defend,” Appling said. “But at the same time, they have a lot of guys that are capable of doing some things from beyond the perimeter, so we just have to max out for 40 minutes.”

6-foot-5 guard Drew Crawford is the Wildcats’ go-to guy, as he averages 15.6 points per game and also leads the team on the glass with seven rebounds per game. In the paint, Northwestern will trot out 7-foot center Alex Olah, who averages 9.1 points and 5.2 boards per game.

Besides Olah and Crawford, the Wildcats are struggling with rebounding, averaging 34.5 boards per game — making them the 226th-highest rebounding team in the nation.

Not only will Northwestern have to go above and beyond in rebounding, but Collins knows he will have to slow the tempo of MSU’s offense.

“(We have to) take away their spurts, and their ability to get out with Appling, and (Gary) Harris and (Branden) Dawson and (Adreian) Payne,” Collins said Monday in a teleconference. “They get out in the open floor and they hit you with those runs that are just hard to recover from.”

Injury report

Fortunately for Collins and his Wildcats, the Spartans could be without Payne or Dawson, as they are just two casualties in MSU’s injury and illness-plagued season.

Dawson is listed as day-to-day with a virus that left him feeling dizzy and unenergetic during Saturday’s game against Minnesota.

Payne’s chances to play also are “questionable” for the game, as Izzo is willing to hold off on playing his senior center until his sprained foot is back to “100 percent.”

Izzo will be getting junior guard Travis Trice back, who missed a week of action prior to the game against Minnesota where he saw limited minutes as a result of an illness.

When asked about how he physically felt on Monday on a scale of one to 10, Trice said he feels like a 10, but still needs to get back into shape after missing a week of practice and the game against Ohio State.