Evanston, Ill. — Despite being on a 17-game losing streak, the Northwestern women's basketball team gave MSU fits Thursday night.

While MSU is clearly the better team, and the score, a 55-48 win, showed that, it was not the kind of result the Spartans wanted heading into a Sunday showdown with No. 13 Purdue.

MSU turned the ball over 23 times — including five each from MSU's three starting guards — and allowed a team that shot 21.9 percent to get off with just a seven-point loss.

"I was disappointed that we couldn't keep the intensity and fire going," MSU head coach Joanne P. McCallie said. "We gave some things back to Northwestern. We gave them the chance to make miniruns. We have to work on our 40-minute focus and move on and reduce the turnovers, of course."

Case in point: MSU turned the ball over five times in the first five minutes, including on their first three possessions, en route to finding itself down 11-2.

But for all of MSU's struggles, the Wildcats were even more inept, hitting 8-of-36 field goals in the first half, allowing the Spartans to climb back and take a 29-22 halftime lead.

MSU then scored the first 11 points of the second half to take a 40-22 lead and the game looked all but over.

Then something happened. The turnovers started to pile up at inopportune times as did the fouls, and Northwestern found itself heading to the free-throw line often. At one point, they scored eight straight points on six different trips to the line.

That, combined with a couple of baskets and the Spartans inability to put the ball in themselves, put the Wildcats down by only four, 48-44.

But by that point, time was not on Northwestern's side.

The Spartans didn't let the Wildcats climb any closer, scoring seven points at the line down the stretch to put the game away.

Sophomore guard Mia Johnson scored five of those points and finished with 15 points.

"It is what it is," McCallie said. "It was a good defensive effort, that's what it was. It was a defensive ball game, nothing exciting about it and the folks at home didn't miss much, that's for sure."

Senior guard Victoria Lucas-Perry finished with nine points and a season-high 10 rebounds. Kaitlin McInerney led Northwestern with 15 points and seven rebounds.