EAST LANSING— No. 8 Michigan State men’s basketball added its sixth ranked win to its season resume on Sunday afternoon over No. 11 Wisconsin with a 71-62 victory.
“I just wanna keep getting better, we gotta get better, we didn’t get better today,” MSU head coach Tom Izzo said. “I thought we just did some things that were unlike us and then we did some really good things too.”
MSU trailed for nearly eight minutes behind Wisconsin to start the first half. An alley-oop dunk from sophomore forward Coen Carr was the spark plug the Spartans needed to go 5-6 from the field to claim its first lead of the game, 19-17, with 11:40 left.
Senior guard Jaden Akins hit three straight triples and a second-chance jumper to help push MSU to its two-point lead. However, it wasn’t an easy path to halftime for the Spartans.
MSU fell into a four-minute scoring drought, allowing Wisconsin to take the lead again. Redshirt freshman guard Jeremy Fears Jr. went 1-2 from the free throw line to end the scoring drought to make it 29-25, Badgers up with five minutes left.
The Spartans trailed for five minutes before claiming their second lead, 32-30, as Akins dropped his fourth triple from behind the arc. Badgers’ sophomore guard John Blackwell responded with a jumper to tie it 32-32 with under a minute left.
Wisconsin ripped MSU’s chances of having the halftime advantage with another jump shot from Blackwell. The Badgers led 34-32 at halftime.
“We’re behind some of these teams at halftime, you know why? Cause they’re all good teams,” Izzo said.
The Spartans took the lead back two minutes into the second half with a three pointer from freshman guard Jase Richardson, 39-36. Wisconsin gave MSU a hard time, taking the lead once and tying it three times, but the Spartans kept the distance from the Badgers from the 13:52 mark until the end.
“The last six, seven minutes, I felt we really inflicted some damage to ourselves,” Wisconsin head coach Greg Gard said.
MSU built up to a 10-point lead over Wisconsin in the final minutes of play and never let Wisconsin get closer than four points in the final three minutes.
Three Spartans finished in double figures, including, Akins with 19 points, Richardson with 11 points and junior forward Jaxon Kohler with 10 points. Kohler recorded his seventh double-double with a career-high of 16 rebounds.
“He’s just an animal,” Izzo said of Kohler. “There’s never a day when he doesn’t come to practice. There’s never a day where he doesn’t come and go hard.”
MSU will be traveling for its final regular season road game to take on Iowa on Thursday with tip-off set for 8 p.m. The game will be broadcast on FS1.
