Called “State,” the play was supposed to have Johnson pass the ball to a flashing Lykendra Johnson who would find junior center Allyssa DeHaan in the post for an open layup. Instead, junior center Lauren Aitch flashed, freshman forward Lykendra Johnson flared and DeHaan was double covered.

When Lykendra Johnson got the ball, she noticed the double team and passed the ball to Aitch, who was left wide open and fired a high-arcing shot.

The ball went straight through the net, giving MSU a 57-55 victory and locking the team into the No. 2 seed in the Big Ten Tournament.

“That’s a shot I’ve practiced for a long time,” Aitch said. “I took it in rhythm, which is a big thing when you’re shooting. When you take the shot if you wait for a second, sometimes you miss it. So, I took it and shot it. It felt good too, coming off my hand. Either it was going to be an air ball or it was going to be a miss, from how high it was.”

The game wasn’t always as exciting. It started slow and methodical, as both teams tried to figure out the opposing defense.

MSU got out to an early lead behind the inspired play of DeHaan. She opened the scoring with a turnaround jumper in the paint, then called for a pass in transition and hit another turnaround to give MSU a 4-0 lead.

The game quickly came back to even as Purdue forward Lindsay Wisdom-Hylton found her range, hitting two shots from just behind the free-throw line. A pair of free throws from forward Lakisha Freeman gave the Boilermakers the 6-5 lead.

The Spartans would take the lead back, going on a 9-2 run over the next two minutes. The run was capped by a shot from sophomore Kalisha Keane in transition that gave MSU a 14-8 lead and forced Purdue to take a timeout.

Purdue would cut the lead to one, 27-26, entering halftime, as Freeman scored two quick buckets before the break.

The Boilermakers kept that momentum out of the break, as they jumped out to a five-point advantage. Freeman again powered her way to the basket, giving Purdue the 36-31 lead. Freeman finished with a game-high 20 points on 7-of-9 shooting.

The game turned in the Spartans’ favor with seven minutes to play, when as they were down six just a minute earlier, Keane followed a layup by junior forward Aisha Jefferson with a 3-pointer from the left corner to bring MSU within one, 44-43. She would follow that with a jumper from 18-feet out the next time down the floor, sending the crowd into a frenzy and giving MSU the 45-44 lead.

Purdue again took back the lead, but DeHaan hit three more big shots to put MSU in the lead by four, 55-51.

That was when Purdue guard Brittany Rayburn took charge, twice driving the lane and drawing a foul, then knocking down all four foul shots to even the game at 55.

But it was the Spartans’ day, as Aitch knocked down the game winner, giving MSU the 57-55 victory.

“I thought this was a game we had to have and had to have for a lot of different reasons,” head coach Suzy Merchant said. “I think the biggest thing we talked about was respect. I felt like people were kind of counting us out. We had the toughest finish of anybody that was playing, Purdue was on a winning streak. It was almost like people were conceding this as a loss.

“I know we’ve had some adversity but we found a way.”