Michigan State basketball grinds out 69-65 win at Wisconsin with late run, free throws
MADISON, Wis. — What began as ho-hum Tuesday game turned into a thrilling finish.
And Michigan State basketball rode A.J. Hoggard, Joey Hauser and Malik Hall to a 69-65 road victory over No. 18 Wisconsin, extending the Spartans’ win streak to seven straight.
With MSU down five and a little over 4 minutes to play, Hall scored four straight points with a pair of free throws and a layup while getting fouled. Hauser connected on a 3-pointer that gave the lead back to the Spartans (12-4, 4-1 Big Ten) in a game that featured 14 lead changes and four ties.
MSU coach Tom Izzo called it "a hell of a game for us," sparked by the performance of his veteran leaders.
"A.J. Hoggard was the man down the stretch. Joey Hauser played really well," Izzo said. "And Malik Hall, you can see why he's so valuable."
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MSU made its final eight shots and its last four free throws to pull away, going 16-for-17 at the line for the game.
"We got some big stops there, we made some big buckets," said Hauser, a Wisconsin native, led the Spartans with 20 points and eight rebounds, making 6 of 8 shots, and hit all six of his free throws. "And it wasn't just one guy. … It just speaks to our leadership, making winning plays at the end of games."
The Badgers (11-4, 3-2), playing without leading scorer forward Tyler Wahl for the second straight loss, tied it twice in the final two minutes. But Hoggard scored on a pair of driving layups and hit two free throws with 28.3 seconds left. After Wisconsin pulled back within two on Max Klismet’s two free throws with 13.5 ticks to go, Tyson Walker drained two more to seal the Spartans’ victory.
Walker added 13 points, Jaden Akins scored 12 and Hoggard had 10 points and eight assists with four rebounds. Mady Sissoko grabbed 11 rebounds for the Spartans, who return to the road quickly, with a 9 p.m. matchup Friday at Illinois (FS1).
Hall finished with six of his eight points in the second half and added five boards as MSU had an 18-7 rebounding advantage in the second half Tuesday and finished with a 33-18 edge.
Steve Crowl led Wisconsin with 19 points, while Chucky Hepburn added 14 and Connor Essegian added 13 points. The Badgers outscored MSU, 30-26, in the post, a deficit the Spartans trimmed late, and the Wisconsin bench had a 20-8 scoring edge.
Back-and-forth
The Spartans came out firing with a pair of 3-pointers from Akins and Walker to open the game — the 6-0 lead 1:01 into the game was their largest of the night — before missing four straight shots, including a couple layups, and turning it over once.
Hauser, from Stevens Point, Wisconsin, missed one of those around the basket and a 3-point attempt. From there, though, the senior forward started getting aggressive with the ball and taking it to the basket. That included a nifty baseline layup off a spin move, but his attacking off the dribble also caught the Badgers flat-footed defensively. Hauser made all of his free throws in the first half, his second-most trips of the season behind his 7-for-8 performance in a loss to Alabama.
"We did try to get to the free-throw line a little bit more," Izzo said. "Not that 17 is a ton, but it's a lot more than we've been lately. And then to make 16 out of 17, it just shows you how valuable it is. I mean, we needed just about everyone to be a good team here."
Wisconsin used the long ball to get back in the game, hitting 4 of 5 shots including three 3-pointers, then took its first lead at 22-21 on a conventional three-point play by Hepburn with 7:23 to go.
The teams exchanged leads four times from there, with Hauser getting six of his 10 first-half points in the final 5:35. Hoggard found Walker with a cross-court pass off a post-up, and his fellow guard drained a 3-pointer from the right corner that with a little over 30 seconds left that gave MSU a 33-31 lead it took to half.
"I thought we did a lot of good things," Izzo said. "I thought we made some mistakes when we started to go too much one-on-one."
Far from pretty
Those trends of nondescript and sometimes sloppy play continued into the second half.
The Spartans and Badgers traded the lead nine times over the first 9½ minutes of the second half until Crowl’s layup at the 10:29 mark put Wisconsin up, 47-46. Neither team went ahead by more than four points though until Carter Gilmore’s 3-pointer with 5:43 to play extended the Badgers’ cushion to 57-52.
It didn’t help MSU that it turned the ball over eight times as Wisconsin continued to dominate in the paint. Coach Tom Izzo used Sissoko and Carson Cooper exclusively after Jaxon Kohler went to the bench at 8:34 of the first half. Izzo said after he felt Cooper and Sissoko, who took a shot above his right eye and played with four fouls in the final 4:27, matched up with the Badgers' big men.
Hall and Hauser, though, pulled MSU back ahead with a 9-0 run. Hauser came off a screen and caught a pass on the right wing and drained a 3-pointer as the Kohl Center crowd groaned as he shot it. That put the Spartans back up 61-59 with 2:19 left, but it was brief as the two teams locked in for a much higher level of back-and-forth play over the final four minutes.
"I think last game I said it was pretty gritty," Hall said of Saturday's win over Michigan, "but I think this one was a little bit more."
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @chrissolari.
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Next up: Fighting Illini
Matchup: Michigan State (12-4, 4-1 Big Ten) at Illinois (10-5, 1-3 entering Tuesday).
Tipoff: 9 p.m. Friday; Assembly Hall, Champaign, Illinois.
TV/radio: FS1; WJR-AM (760).
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State basketball grinds out 69-65 win at Wisconsin
