WATCH: Michigan State Coach Tom Izzo Speaks After Win Over Illinois

EAST LANSING, Mich. -- No. 12 Michigan State got the test that many were waiting for when it hosted No. 19 Illinois on Sunday afternoon.
The Spartans passed the test, defeating the Fighting Illini 80-78 with an admirable second-half effort.
Michigan State coach Tom Izzo, who had been quite critical of his team after its win over Penn State on Wednesday, was in much better spirits in his postgame press conference on Sunday.
You can watch below:
Below is a partial transcript from Izzo's opening statement of his presser:
Izzo: "Wow, just another day in paradise, I guess. But I hope our fans appreciated one of the better games. I mean, it was a crazy game, and I know we were both complaining about calls and this and that, but I thought two teams really competed. I said this before the game, and now I'll say it after the game: I really do believe they're the best team in the league right now. I'm not slighting us, I’m not slighting Purdue, I'm not slighting Michigan or anyone else. I just think, right now, that was a tough team to play. And we did make some mistakes early that really bothered us, because they were scouting report mistakes. And then we missed some free throws early, and they made some shots. I mean, the kid, [Will] Riley, has not been playing well lately, and he had 16 and a halftime. He was unbelievable. And you have Kasparas [Jakucionis], got in foul trouble, that helped us, I mean, there's no question about it. I love the kid [Dra] Gibbs-Lawhorn, tough. I mean, they play hard -- [Morez] Johnson -- they play hard, but we did a hell of a job on [Ben] Humrichous. … Had a lot of good players. I thought we did a decent job on [Kylan] Boswell. We didn't take many 3s, it was because of the way they guarded. We thought we could go inside, we did. We weren't very good in rebounding in the first 10 minutes of the game. They scored 26 points. Second 10, they scored 10 points, and we ended up losing the rebound battle by 1. But that team is really good; we're both 1, 2 in the league in rebounding."
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