Then, in the final 15 minutes, the Spartans took over as their depth and experience proved to be too much for the Falcons, as MSU pulled away for a 72-62 win in the first round of the NCAA Tournament Saturday afternoon at Freedom Hall.

The Spartans advance to play No. 4-seed Kentucky (26-7) at 7:21 p.m. Monday with a chance to advance to the Sweet 16 in Kansas City, Mo. The Wildcats beat No. 13 Liberty, 83-76.

“I thought (Bowling Green) played as good as I’ve seen them play in the first half against us,” MSU head coach Suzy Merchant said. “They shot the ball extremely well. We had to just make an adjustment at halftime and plead with our kids to make them put it on the floor a little more.”

One thing is clear: Aisha Jefferson isn’t ready to go home yet.

For the second straight game, the senior forward carried MSU.

After a 23-point outburst in the Big Ten Tournament semifinals, Jefferson finished with 17 points and nine rebounds in 27 minutes, tied for her third-highest total of the season.

She set the tone for the Spartans (23-9 overall), knocking down 3-pointers to start the scoring in each half.

Jefferson did all this despite fighting off an illness that had her throwing up at the end of the bench in the first half, a half in which she scored 10 points and had seven rebounds.

Jefferson wasn’t the only Spartan laboring. Senior center Allyssa DeHaan, who has battled back spasms since before the Big Ten Tournament, finished with eight points and 11 rebounds.

At one point in the first half, Jefferson was throwing up, and mere feet away from her, DeHaan was lying on the ground trying to loosen her back up.

“She was lying on the floor with her back and I was puking in the trash can next to her and I was like, ‘This is our last go-around, Al, let’s go,’ and she was like, ‘You, too, (Aisha),’” Jefferson said. “And I’m wiping puke off my mouth. … There’s just urgency for us.”

The first half was marked by runs. MSU jumped out to an 8-0 lead, forcing Bowling Green to call timeout. A different Falcons team came out of the break, led by forward Lauren Prochaska. She quickly rattled off three straight baskets, including two triples, to tie the game at eight. Those eight points were part of a 15-0 Bowling Green run that forced MSU into a timeout.

Just like Bowling Green did, the Spartans responded, going on a 10-0 run to take a 18-15 lead.

“Basketball’s a game of runs and how about the start of this game,” Bowling Green head coach Curt Miller said.

“There’s the definition of basketball, is a game of runs the way this game started.”

The runs cooled off from there and the game continued to go back-and-forth as the teams went into halftime tied at 36. The half featured eight ties and five lead changes.

Of Bowling Green’s 36 points, 24 came from 3-point range.

“In a tie game, you don’t want to trade threes for twos and that’s kind of what we were doing there in the first half,” Merchant said. “We were working pretty hard. I thought we did a lot of really good things. They just answered pretty well.”

MSU opened the second half on a 13-5 run to take a 49-41 lead, but the Falcons kept hitting enough shots to keep the game in range.

Bowling Green, though, started to get sloppy. Its rebounding edge, which was around plus-2 for stretches, went to minus-2 and turnovers started mounting as the Spartans started to assert themselves against the fading Falcons. MSU finished with a 42-35 edge on the glass and scored 22 points off 16 turnovers.

“When you give a talented team like that that many possessions, it’s eventually going to catch up with you,” Miller said.

Battling back and taking over the rebounding was a big halftime key for the Spartans.

“At halftime, they were outrebounding us on the offensive glass by two, which is embarrassing on our part since we’re a rebounding team,” DeHaan said. “So we stepped it up.”

MSU grabbed 11 offensive rebounds in the second half, led by DeHaan’s four and three each from freshman guard Jasmine Thomas and senior center Lauren Aitch.

Bowling Green’s fatigue also showed at the free-throw line where the Falcons, a 75.9 percent team from the stripe, shot 56 percent there the second half.

“One of the best foul-shooting teams I’ve ever worked with struggled tonight,” Miller said. “You have to play an ‘A-game’ to beat that team and we didn’t quite play ‘A.’”

The Spartans pulled away for good in the final five minutes, as Bowling Green couldn’t get the stops it needed to get back into the game.

Although MSU was ahead by a comfortable margin late, Merchant still didn’t feel comfortable due to Bowling Green’s proficiency from the outside.

“I said with just under four minutes left, ‘If you think a 10-point lead means anything, this is a team it doesn’t mean anything to,’” Merchant said. “A couple shots and they’re right back in it. I thought our team really responded to that.”

Beyond that, closing out Bowling Green might finally have put last year’s Sweet 16 loss to Iowa State behind the Spartans.

“That seven-point cushion seemed like a lot back then, but we kind of carried over today by finishing it,” Merchant said. “We just talked about being strong in the backcourt with the ball when they started to pressure us and making sure we understand a 10-point lead is nothing with three minutes to go with a team that can shoot threes.”

“We made plays when we needed to, especially on the defensive end,” Merchant said.

Four Spartans were in double figures led by Jefferson’s 17. The point guard duo of junior Brittney Thomas and freshman Jasmine Thomas overcame rough shooting starts to each finish with 11, while Aitch added 10.

For Bowling Green, Prochaska finished with 19 and guard Tracy Pontius went for 15, all off 3-pointers. The Falcons end the season at 27-7.