EVANSTON, Ill.– A solid conference win was just what No. 16 Michigan State was looking for after a home loss to Oregon earlier in the week. MSU found it in a decisive victory over Northwestern in Welsh-Ryan Arena.
“Every game has its own new attention, focus, energy, competitiveness,” MSU head coach Robyn Fralick said. “Came off a frustrating Oregon loss and the good news is you get another chance, so our team got refocused and ready to beat a team that, you know, Northwestern can score.”
It did not start so easy for MSU however, as NU not only stuck around but took control in the first quarter. The Spartans struggled to find heat from distance, going 0-5 from three in the first ten minutes, but found paint success with all 12 points from the floor coming inside.
On the other end, the Wildcats went ahead through tough jumpers inside in the arc and converted on difficult looks. The front of this early effort came from senior forward Caileigh Walsh, who earned nine points and led NU to 46.7% shooting early, as the Wildcats went up 20-15.
While Walsh crossed over her season average of 11.4 points in the first half, finishing with 12, NU’s leading scorer never found the basket again and put up zero in the final 20 minutes.
We saw a similar story for the rest of the half, as NU also found success running inside and finishing at the rim with 14 second-quarter points in the paint. The Wildcats also cleaned up on the glass and outrebounded MSU by nine, limiting the Spartans to only four offensive boards.
The second also mostly saw punch, counterpunch with both squads scoring by committee. To end the half, MSU made five of their last seven from the field, while the Wildcats went 4-5. The needed efficiency for MSU came courtesy of a trusted duo in junior forward Grace VanSlooten and graduate guard Julia Ayrault. They finished the half with nine points apiece and shot 58.3%.
The duo remained consistent throughout, finishing the day with 20 and 14 points respectively. VanSlooten finished as the team’s leading scorer, the team’s steal leader with four and reeled in six rebounds.
“Grace was really efficient,” Fralick said. “I thought she did a great job in the paint, finished, got to the free throw line.”
Junior guard Emma Shumate also made a difference for MSU and found some rhythm from three. She went 2-3 in the second while the Spartans went a combined 4-8. Shumate finished with 12 points, all coming from three, and led the team in made threes and three-point percentage. The extra production from beyond covered their deficit, but only to a halftime tie at 40.
“I thought she [Shumate] made a lot of timely threes too. Any time maybe they’ve been on a little run she answered, or they had a little momentum she created separation,” Fralick said. “Proud of her, she shot confident, she was open, she let it fly, it was fun to watch.”
In what might be a new trend for this team though, the Spartans turned on the afterburners coming out of the break, which kicked off with a VanSlooten and-1 and an Ayrault triple off the reload. This became part of a 9-0 run where MSU needed a kickstart, as NU stayed in the fight. The Wildcats never took the lead back but made it interesting by cutting it back down to five and four on multiple instances.
Thanks to the elevated play of graduate guard Nyla Hampton, and a few key statistical wins, the Spartans finally started to pull away with it towards the end of the third going into the fourth. Hampton hit two massive threes in the third and got eight of her 16 game points in this period. She became one of five Spartans in double figures and became an all-around threat for MSU. On top of shooting 6-8, she recorded three rebounds, five assists, and three steals.
“I thought Nyla was such an x-factor for us in this game, I felt like she made timely shots, defensively made some big steals,” Fralick said. “Just really kinda did the right thing at the right time over and over again.”
MSU as a unit ratcheted up their play in some massive areas of the game as well. While the Spartans lost the overall rebounding margin at minus 11, they made enough of a difference in the second half leading to 11 second-chance points, 17 overall. MSU also created enough offensive discomfort for the Wildcats, causing 18 turnovers for 23 points off them.
The most seismic shift though came down to shot-making for the Spartans and regression on NU’s end. The initial run to start the half sparked MSU to 58.3% from three in the final 20 minutes. When good looks from distance finally started falling, then opportunities from everywhere on the floor opened with MSU going 60.7% shooting overall.
The Wildcats conversely ran out of gas to keep up after a productive first half. Going 13-29 from the floor and only graduate forward Taylor Williams got into double figures in the second half. She finished as the NU leading scorer with 18 points and netted a double-double with 12 rebounds.
“We went to way more halfcourt defense, I thought they were scoring a lot out of our press, so we got way more settled in the halfcourt,” Fralick said. “We did a much better job fronting, we knew that coming in they play through their posts a lot, their posts can be tough matchups.”
Junior guard Theryn Hallock also found her shot late to help put the game to rest, coming away with eight points in the fourth and 13 for the day. The clutch close-out for Hallock resulted in her fifth straight game in double figures and her seventh of her last eight.
While MSU took some time to warm up, they found ways to overwhelm the Wildcats down the stretch and take care of business in an 89-75 B1G road win. NU falls to 7-13 on the season and 0-9 in the Big Ten, the last remaining conference winless team.
The Spartans improve to 18-4 on the season, 8-3 in conference, and jump to fourth in the Big Ten following Maryland’s loss to Illinois. Now entering the stretch of the season where Big Ten and NCAA tournament seeding looms large, MSU is back home for round two against Michigan on Sunday at 2 p.m. Jacob Maurer and Kyle Keegan will be on the call for Impact.