WATCH: Michigan State F Jaxon Kohler Talks Illinois, More

EAST LANSING, Mich. -- Sunday's meeting between No. 12 Michigan State and No. 19 Illinois will be a matchup between the two top rebounding teams in the Big Ten.

Naturally, that means this top-20 showdown will likely come down to the battle of the boards, which makes the presence of the Spartans' leading rebounder, junior Jaxon Kohler, key.

Kohler addressed the media on Friday, discussing the upcoming matchup and more.

You can watch below:

Below is a transcript from Michigan State coach Tom Izzo's opening statement of his postgame press conference on Wednesday:

Izzo: "New shirt tomorrow: 'Be the same.' That's going to be tomorrow: 'Be the same.' Really disappointed in maybe my defensive performance. And I'm telling you -- I'm taking full responsibility for that because I knew we were -- I thought after that game, we had given up 40 points in the last two games [in the second half], and we did not learn much from it. We talked about it, we talked about it as a staff, we talked about it with our players, we talked about talking to the officials, we talked about the way things are, and I didn't get much carry-over tonight, so that means, I did not do a very good job of getting through to my guys. So, I can promise you tonight, I'm going to figure out a way to get through to them. On the positive side, 24 assists on 32 baskets is amazing. 20 out of 24 free throws. Got there a lot, made free throws. 10 turnovers was good, but we had three at halftime, and we had four or five in a row during that run when we were up 10. And that happened at Northwestern. So that means we cannot handle success right now. So quit saying where we are. Because we're not anywhere yet. We're a good basketball team that's got a long, long, long, long ways to go to get better. OK? Period. That's where we are. And Frankie Fidler had a hell of a game, but other than that, I thought we were very pedestrian-like. We took bad shots, the wrong guys were taking some shots -- we got to get other guys some shots. And I'll answer any questions you got, but not many times this year have I been disappointed in our defensive performance. Tonight, I'm very disappointed."

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