“It’s a good win and a big win for us,” MSU head coach Suzy Merchant said. “We were very disappointed in our effort and how we played as a team on Friday. We just looked very flat and didn’t compete. We talked a lot about that.”

Ohio State head coach Jim Foster said he saw a team that was playing with a sense of desperation.

“They had lost three of four, they’ve got some drive,” he said. “They are at home in a situation where if they lose their first two home games all of a sudden, they’ve lost four of five. They just played hard.”

The game started out as a back-and-forth affair, as Ohio State (9-3 overall, 0-1 Big Ten) couldn’t gather more than a four point lead through the first 10 minutes.

But it was a 3-pointer by junior guard Mia Johnson that seemed to give the Spartans (9-5, 1-1) life, as they went on a 17-8 run to close out the half with a 34-29 lead.

Sophomore center Allyssa DeHaan, who took just four shots against Minnesota, had 10 points at the half. She finished with a game-high 18 points.

“Allyssa’s state of mind was a lot different in this game,” Merchant said. “Against Minnesota, she just got caught between the free-throw lines. She just looked tired out there. I thought today she had much fresher legs, gave us great minutes and have a different mentality to her.”

The Spartans continued to overwhelm the Buckeyes early in the second half, going on an 11-4 run to start things off. A 3-pointer by freshman forward Kalisha Keane forced Foster into a timeout that whipped the crowd of 8,705 into a bigger frenzy.

“We had great fans and they wanted us to win so bad,” DeHaan said. “They were so into the game and that was beautiful.”

MSU extended its lead out to 13 on a lay-in by freshman guard Brittney Thomas, but after that, Ohio State started to crawl back, as the Spartans couldn’t find the basket.

A jumper by Jantel Lavender cut MSU’s lead down to four, 54-50, with 6:30 to go, but the Buckeyes went cold from there as well, hitting just one field goal the rest of the game.

The Spartans put an exclamation point on the effort with five offensive rebounds in the final three minutes, including two from Johnson, to put away Ohio State.

“Good things happen when you buy into playing hard,” Merchant said. “It starts there and I thought our kids did a great job of working at that piece.”

Johnson, Thomas and senior Alisa Wulff grabbed 19 of MSU’s 44 rebounds while five Spartans collected six or more boards.

“(It’s) effort,” Foster said. “When guards get rebounds, they are coming from the perimeter. Every time one of those guards came to the glass, someone is responsible for putting a body on them and we didn’t do that. So, effort. It’s not rocket science, it’s pretty easy.”

DeHaan said the difference between Friday’s game and Sunday’s game was energy.

“That’s what this team has been missing,” she said. “It’s been missing emotion, it’s been missing heart and it’s been missing that kind of chemistry where we come together and we showed that today on the court.”