The MSU women's basketball team always boasts about how it takes no opponent lightly and how the next game is the most important one on the schedule.
That philosophy will be put to the test at 8 p.m. tonight, when the Spartans face Northwestern at Welsh-Ryan Arena.
The Wildcats sit firmly in the Big Ten basement and have lost 17 games straight, including all 11 Big Ten contests they've played.
"We expect everybody to bring their A-game," sophomore guard Mia Johnson said. "They want to win as much as we do, I'm sure."
MSU head coach Joanne P. McCallie played at Northwestern from 1984-87, earning All-Big Ten honorable mention in her senior season. This will be the fifth time she has gone back to Evanston, Ill., since becoming head coach at MSU.
"I've got great friends there that I see there every time I return," she said. "I've got great admiration for the school because I know what it's like to go there, but when it comes to the game and the competition, I'm a little bit separate. It's a fond place for me, but relative to the game, it's just another Big Ten game."
The game should give MSU a confidence boost going into one of its toughest challenges of the season Sunday, when the Spartans stay on the road against No. 13 Purdue.
But MSU has a lot to focus on within itself.
"We need to be much more consistent rebounding-wise," McCallie said. "We are a better rebounding team than we showed Sunday, going even with Illinois, even though they are a very good rebounding team. That's a challenge we have in front of us and an opportunity to get after the next time we play."
But getting consistent efforts on the boards and on defense is something MSU has struggled to do.
"When we put our mind to it, we can be incredibly effective with rebounding and defense," McCallie said. "That puts us in every game."
With McCallie searching for those things, it's no wonder freshman guard Takeya Fortner is earning more minutes. McCallie said she liked the way Fortner had been rebounding in practice and decided to reward her. She played 16 minutes in the last two games and gave a solid account of herself on both ends of the floor.
"For me, as a coach, I'm looking for people to perform in practice," McCallie said.
"Our bench is so even, so it's hard to distinguish who I'd go to first, and so I'm looking for objective measures of separate people. And for Takeya, it's been rebounding and defense. Her defensive quickness, her ability to pick up the ball full court — (rebounding and defense) are what's separated her."
This game marks the beginning of a stretch in which MSU plays four of its last six games on the road. But this doesn't bother senior guard Victoria Lucas-Perry.
"We're excited to get on the road and really get after it," she said, "because the last couple of games on the road, we didn't play as well as we needed to."
