Four MSU players reach double figures in the win.
EAST LANSING, Mich. - Michigan State women's basketball built a huge 47-24 half time lead, and never looked back en route to a 76-65 win over Minnesota Monday night to celebrate National Girls and Women in Sports Day at the Breslin Center.
With the victory, the Spartans have now won four-straight games to improve to 17-5 overall and 7-4 in Big Ten action. The seven league wins matches the win total from last season when MSU was 7-10. Since defeating MSU on Jan. 20, Minnesota has now lost four-straight games, falling to 14-8 overall and 4-7 in Big Ten play.
Overall, four Spartans reached double figures in the victory, led by graduate guard Moira Joiner's 21 points, nine rebounds and five assists. Joiner has reached the 20-point mark four times this season. Graduate guard/forward Julia Ayrault added 16 points to go along with seven rebounds and a game-high four blocks. Junior guard DeeDee Hagemann scored 13 points, while adding five helpers. Sophomore guard Theryn Hallock scored 10 points.
The Golden Gophers missed their first five attempts, as MSU jumped out to a 6-1 lead. Minnesota corrected and used a 7-0 run to take its first lead 8-6. Michigan State was hitting from long range early on with five treys in the first quarter alone. A 3-pointer by Tory Ozment made it a 20-12 game with 51.4 seconds remaining in the period to put MSU up 20-12.
After an old-fashioned 3-pointer by Ayrault MSU took its first double-digit lead 26-16. The run extended to 9-0 to put the Spartans on top 29-16 with under seven left in the half. Michigan State ended the half on an 8-0 run to lead 47-24 at the break. MSU shot an eye-popping 50 percent from beyond the arc in the first half, going 9-for-18. Ayrault led the Spartans with 13 points, including 3-for-3 from long range.
Minnesota scored the first nine points of the second half to trim the MSU advantage to 47-33, leading to a Spartan timeout at the 7:08 mark. Whenever the Spartans bounced back, the Gophers had an answer. Despite out-scoring MSU 22-13 in the period, Michigan State retained a 60-46 lead, heading into the fourth quarter. Mallory Heyer led Minnesota with seven points in the period, while Joiner scored eight for the Spartans.
In the fourth quarter, the Gophers got it down to a single-digit deficit 71-62 after a Heyer 3-point play with two minutes left. Joiner drilled the Spartans 12 trey of the games to put MSU back up by double digits, 76-65 with 43 seconds remaining.
The 12 3-pointers were the most by the Spartans since drilling 13 against Northwestern at home on Jan. 17. MSU has reached double figures in treys 10 times this season.
The Spartans continue a busy week taking on No. 14 Indiana on Thursday, Feb. 8 at 7 p.m. on Peacock. MSU concludes the week hosting No. 5 Ohio State on Sunday, Feb. 11 at 4 p.m. also on Peacock.
Michigan State head coach Robyn Fralick
Opening statement …
I'm really proud of our team for finding a way to beat a good Minnesota team. A team we played a few weeks ago, and really struggled against. I thought it was the tail of two halves. We had a really good second half. There's some things we can definitely learn moving forward, but I'm proud of our overall effort. I thought we did a lot of things better from a few weeks ago.
On the full court press …
The trick we had is that we hadn't scored. They scored 10 points in the second quarter and scored nine in the first two minutes to start the second half. It really helped us because we were able to score off our press set, and we scored when we got in our press set. I thought our ability to score helps us get our full court pressure where we want it to be.
On beating Minnesota without their best player …
There are no easy wins in this league. I think we were really focused on Minnesota. Just having to played them a few weeks ago and losing, we knew we had a physical and well coached team. That's where all of our time and effort has been. We got more big games this week, and we'll tackle those when they are in front of us. If there is one thing I've learned really quickly is that there are no easy wins in this league. Any win, you've got to savor it and get ready for the next one.
On if the NCAA Tournament is the goal for this team …
I think that's the goal. I think that's a good target. I also think that's a hard target. We need to continue to stay in pursuit of that.
On the improvement of offense from the previous Minnesota loss …
The Minnesota game had a lot of elements to it. One of them was the first time around. We got derailed, and that's on me. Looking back, we got away from things that we knew would help us. And when you lose, you look really closely. It wasn't just that game, if you looked closely at how we are and how we've been successful, I thought we got back to that tonight. I thought that game zoomed in on us and made us look at things to do better.
On navigating a tough upcoming schedule …
You've got to have a good mix of rest and focus. The time that you get to prepare has to be really sharp and concise and easy to execute. So that's where we are. The reality is the whole league has different stretches of lots of games, consistency and toughness are really important if you want to be good. We are going to be tested, especially this week.
On it being a fast game …
It was a fast game. You got to be able to score multidimensionally, tonight we did that. We made threes, we scored off turnovers, which the first time we couldn't score off turnovers. We found ways to score inside.
Recap courtesy of MSU Athletics.
