EAST LANSING – The Michigan State women’s basketball team returned to the Breslin Center on Thursday afternoon and stunned the No. 4 Indiana Hoosiers with an 83-78 upset win. 

Four Spartans reached double-digits in the win, with graduate senior Kamaria McDaniel leading the team with 24 points- her fourth 20-point game of the season. Senior forward Taiyier Parks and sophomore guard Matilda Ekh each had 18 points, and sophomore guard DeeDee Hagemann added 15 points and eight assists. 

The 18 points scored by Parks tied her career-high for the second time this season.

“We’ve been close on a lot of these games,” said head coach Suzy Merchant. “We were talking about changing our mindset and thinking about when things get tight, we’re not going to play to lose, we’re going to play to win.”

The Spartans’ win resulted in the Hoosier’s first loss of the season, as Indiana dropped to 12-1 overall. This was the highest win over a ranked opponent since upsetting No. 4 Michigan, 63-57, last season on Feb. 10, 2022.  

With the win, the Spartans have won three-straight games and improved to 9-5 overall and 1-2 in conference play. 

YESSSSS!!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/6jx7eeU9oe

— Michigan State Women's Basketball (@MSU_WBasketball) December 29, 2022

Along with a solid offensive performance from MSU for all four quarters, the team forced 21 turnovers against an Indiana team averaging 12 turnovers a game so far this season. 

“I thought our kids did a great job of controlling the tempo, they had to play it our way, we had 28 points off turnovers and that is a team that averages 12 turnovers a game,” said Merchant. “I thought our kids were speeding them up and were playing faster than they normally do, which was important for us.”

The first half featured a 15-27 shooting performance from the Spartans, along with Indiana going 12-23 from the field. MSU would add the first four points of the second quarter and kept the Hoosiers at bay before a Sydney Parish three-pointer to stop the Indiana scoring drought. Senior forward Mackenzie Holmes would add her 14th point of the first half to make it 35-33 MSU at halftime. 

Holmes would finish with 32 points and 12 rebounds. 

Michigan State would go up by 11 points with under four minutes to play in the third quarter after a pair of free throws by DeeDee Hagemann.

Michigan State led the game for 35:49 of the contest, trailing for just 1:40, and there were seven ties.

The Hoosiers tied the game at 58-58 in the fourth quarter after a Holmes free throw. The tightly-contested matchup between the Spartans and the Hoosiers kept fans on their feet.  

With each team trading baskets and Indiana tying the game twice, the Spartans found a way to come out of the contest with a victory, going 11-15 at the free-throw line in the fourth quarter. 

The Spartans will travel to Evanston to take on Northwestern on Jan. 2 at 8 p.m.