Last year, Northwestern had the good fortune of playing perpetual Big Ten heavyweight Michigan State early in the season. The Wildcats beat the Spartans in East Lansing, Mich., in December, right before MSU turned it around and won seven straight games on their way to the NCAA Tournament's Sweet 16.

The Wildcats aren’t as lucky this time around.

Michigan State again stumbled out of the gate early this season, losing two of their first three, and then both of their Big Ten games in December. They sat at 4-5 after the road loss to the Huskers.

But the Spartan team coming into Welsh-Ryan Arena on Sunday night (6:30 p.m., BTN) looks very different than that one. They are red-hot and riding a five-game winning streak that started with an eye-opening 24-point beatdown of then-No. 6 Baylor on Dec. 16 and includes Thursday night’s 31-point demolition of Penn State.

Just ask Northwestern head coach Chris Collins about the difference he’s seen in the Spartans.

“The Michigan State team we’re playing now isn’t the Michigan State team that played against Wisconsin and Nebraska a month ago,” he said during Thursday’s press conference. “They’ve found their stride, they’re playing well, they’re confident, they’re shooting better.”

The Spartans built a 25-point halftime lead against the overwhelmed Nittany Lions and coasted behind 24 points from Malik Hall and 22 from Tyson Walker. MSU shot 56.3% from the floor and 47.6% on 3-pointers as a team, forced 16 turnovers and held a 24-10 advantage on points off turnovers. They bludgeoned Penn State in all phases.

Collins says that the Spartans are now back to playing with what he calls “Michigan State speed.” Earlier in the season, he saw a team that wasn’t pushing the ball up the floor and struggled to shoot. But now, guys like Hall, Jaden Akins and AJ Hoggard have upped their games in support of their star, Walker, who is the No. 3 scorer in the Big Ten at 20.2 points per game.

While Michigan State is coming off of a confidence-building 30-point win, Northwestern is trying to pick up the pieces after a gruesome 30-point loss at No. 9 Illinois on Wednesday night. The Illini routed Northwestern from buzzer to buzzer behind 32 points from Marcus Domask.

The Illini got any shot they wanted against a Northwestern team that calls defense its strength. Illinois shot a blistering 62.5% from the field and hit 55.6% of their 3s. The Illini’s 99 points were the most allowed by the Wildcats since a brutal 112-76 loss to Iowa in the 2022 Big Ten Tournament, before assistant coach Chris Lowery arrived to transform the defense.

Collins said he was most bothered by the Wildcats’ “lack of physicality. We kind of backed down to Illinois’ physicality. They brought the fight to us.”

Illinois made its first six shots out of the gate and, Collins said, “we never responded to that first punch.”

Northwestern typically goes as their guards go, and two of the starting four struggled against the Illini. Boo Buie carried the load offensively with 20 points, but he also turned the ball over four times and failed to register an assist. Ty Berry chipped in with 14 points, but Brooks Barnhizer and Ryan Langborg combined for just 11 points on 5-for-19 shooting.

Collins likes to look at the assists-to-baskets ratio as a good barometer of how well his team is playing. The Wildcats had just eight assists on their 20 makes, their lowest number of the season.

As a result, the Wildcats suffered a drubbing that was eerily similar to their early 29-point loss to Pitt last season. The good news there is that Northwestern rebounded from that ugly home loss to the Panthers and went on the road to knock off – you guessed it – then No. 20 Michigan State in their next outing to start a five-game winning streak.

Collins and Buie hope that the Wildcats can come off the canvas quickly once again. They know that the Big Ten schedule is a gauntlet.

“It’s a long season, there’s a lot of ups and a lot of downs,” said Buie. “Whether you lose by a lot or lose by one, a loss is a loss, just like a win is a win.”

“You’re going to be judged over 20 games,” echoed Collins. “There’s times where, maybe, you have a bad week or a [bad] couple games. The biggest things is when we’ve had good seasons, we’ve been able to eliminate that extended drought.”

Michigan State’s cast changes, but their style of play doesn’t vary much year-to-year. Izzo has been in charge of the program since 1995, so Collins, who came around in 2013, knows the future Hall of Fame coach’s system inside and out. He is just 3-12 against Izzo, but he’s won the last two in a row.

“Forever and a day, with Coach Izzo’s team, when you play them, the very first thing is transition defense,” said Collins. “And the very second thing on the board is rebounding.”

Northwestern wants to get the Spartans into a half-court game and run “opportunistically,” said Collins. If the Wildcats let the Spartans push the pace and don’t stop the ball on the break, it could be another long night.

Collins said that his team has a sense of urgency about Sunday’s game, which, the program announced on Friday, is sold out.

“All our guys have a little bit of a bad taste in our mouths,” said Collins. “We didn’t play we got punished for that by a really good team.”

Buie, who had 20 points to lead all scorers in last season's 70-63 win over the Spartans, expects another physical game. He thinks keeping Michigan State off the offensive glass will be key, but at the same time, he wants to see the team return to playing their style of basketball.

“[We need to] get back to us, playing and guarding the way we can.”