Welcome back, Ager and Davis.
The two seniors — guard Maurice Ager and center Paul Davis — came back in full force Wednesday night, combining for 51 points as No. 14 MSU knocked off No. 9 Indiana 87-73 for its first conference win.
"We felt that we had an obligation not only to the team, but me and Mo, to each other to not let this keep slipping," said Davis, coming off a two-point effort against Wisconsin.
"We knew exactly what had to be done. We knew what had to be said, we knew how we had to play and we knew we had to win, and I think all that was done," Davis said.
Davis finished with 23 points, shot 8-of-1 from the field and hit all seven of his free throws. He also had 10 rebounds to notch his ninth double-double of the season.
Ager, meanwhile, caught fire after missing his first three attempts, making 9 of his final 10 attempts including four 3-pointers. He finished with a floor-high 28 points.
"Sometimes Mo misses a shot or two, and he's still got to realize he's one of our top options," MSU head coach Tom Izzo said. "He really played a complete game in my mind."
Indiana (10-3 overall, 2-1 Big Ten) worked the ball to forward Marco Killingsworth on nearly every possession, and the Spartans (13-4, 1-2) rotated defenders Davis, senior forward Matt Trannon and redshirt freshman forward Marquise Gray on the scorer. Killingsworth finished with 27 points on 13-of-22 shooting but had five turnovers and only one rebound.
"We didn't stop Killingsworth, but we had to do what we thought we had to do," Izzo said.
Robert Vaden was the only other Hoosier in double figures with 20.
With the 6-foot-5 Vaden starting at power forward in place of the injured D.J. White, Trannon started ahead of Gray. Trannon responded with a career-high 11 points in 33 minutes, and Gray had eight points and five rebounds off the bench.
Indiana, the Big Ten's best shooting team, shot 54.7 percent from the floor. But the Spartans, playing in front of their full student section for just the second time this season, topped the Hoosiers with a blistering 58.8 percent shooting performance, including 64 percent (16-of-25) after halftime.
"They made the game too hard for us in the second half," Indiana head coach Mike Davis said. "They just kept coming, kept coming, kept coming. It was a six-point game, but the crowd was so wild and crazy that some of our guys thought we were down 20."
A big factor in MSU's offensive turnaround was stellar ball movement. The Spartans had 21 assists on their 30 baskets, led by seven from sophomore guard Drew Neitzel.
"We're a good offensive team and once we start moving the ball around like that it'll open up opportunities for everybody," Ager said.
The game got heated midway through the second half. With Izzo still arguing for a foul after Trannon was knocked to the ground going for an offensive rebound on the previous possession, Davis was fouled hard by Killingsworth under the basket. The two had to be separated by the referees.
Killingsworth was booed loudly for the rest of the game and managed just one field goal after the incident.
Izzo said the win was an important stepping stone for his team as it now hits the road to face No. 19 Ohio State on Sunday.
"It wasn't a monsterous step, but we beat a good team," Izzo said. "For a program that had the M.O. of never beating a ranked team, and now this year we've beaten three top 10 teams. It shows you a little bit about the guys.
"I like the way we kind of hung in there and just kind of did it in a workman-like way."
Tom Keller can be reached at kellert1@msu.edu.
