Junior guard Brittney Thomas attempts to pass the ball while being blocked by Notre Dame guard Skylar Diggins during Thursday’s game at Breslin Center. The Spartans were defeated by the Fighting Irish 68-67.
Despite facing a double-digit deficit in both the first and second halves, the MSU women’s basketball team battled back time and time again.
But at the end, the inability to secure the basketball off a missed free throw proved to be MSU’s downfall, as No. 5 Notre Dame walked away with a 68-67 win Thursday night at Breslin Center.
MSU head coach Suzy Merchant said after the game she’s never been as angry in her coaching career as she was entering the locker room.
“It’s unfortunate it came down to that to be honest with you,” she said. “That was one of our key components in the scouting report. On Tuesday, we showed them their offensive rebounding and there was probably 12 clips on free throw screen-outs and how important that was in this game; so to see it come down twice down there was a little unfortunate and something as a coach you get frustrated about.”
Sophomore forward Lykendra Johnson said Merchant let the team have it in the locker room.
“At halftime, she said the free throw screen-out was going to cost us the game,” Johnson said. “She was right. It’s kind of ironic, I guess.”
The final 20 seconds were frantic. Senior center Allyssa DeHaan, who led all scorers with 20 points, had a short basket go halfway down and come out.
“That thing seemed like it was through the rim and it came back out,” Merchant said.
Notre Dame guard Lindsay Schrader grabbed the rebound and was fouled by sophomore forward Lykendra Johnson, despite Johnson’s protests that she didn’t touch her. Johnson said the referee told her she poked Schrader in the eye.
“That’s always frustrating because they were challenging rebounds, too, all night,” Merchant said. “It was frustrating for it to come down to that. I’ll have to take a look at it and see if it was (a foul).”
Schrader missed the front end of a 1-and-1, but the rebound was knocked out of DeHaan’s hands and senior forward Aisha Jefferson was whistled for a foul, sending Notre Dame guard Ashley Barlow to the line for two shots.
“I should’ve been stronger with the rebound, but it was real physical down there,” DeHaan said.
Barlow bricked the first, but came back and hit the second to give the Fighting Irish a 68-67 lead with 10 seconds to play.
Jefferson drove the ball down the court but her floater in the lane came up short and Barlow grabbed her seventh rebound of the game to seal the victory for Notre Dame.
Notre Dame came out on fire offensive, hitting its first four field goals and four of its first five 3-pointers to take an 18-7 lead about five minutes into the game. But MSU roared back, cutting the deficit to 21-20 on a 3-pointer by Johnson. The Spartans would tie the game off an offensive rebound and a bucket by DeHaan.
But in a game of runs, the Fighting Irish would come back and take a 41-33 lead into halftime.
Notre Dame would bolt ahead to a 45-35 lead early in the half on a bucket by forward Becca Bruszewski. On the play, DeHaan went down after rolling her ankle and went straight to the locker room.
While DeHaan was away, the Spartans went on a 13-2 run to take a 48-47 lead, forcing Notre Dame to call timeout.
“We went to our one-on-one, which is not our game,” Notre Dame head coach Muffet McGraw said. “We went to each individual person trying to play their own game, going one-on-one. We turned it over, we didn’t rebound, we were completely out of sorts.”
DeHaan checked back in with 11:04 remaining and MSU ahead 52-51. Baskets by freshman guard Jasmine Thomas and DeHaan gave the Spartans their largest lead of the game, but the Irish came right back, going on a 11-2 run to take a 62-58 lead.
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From there, the teams would go back and forth, leading to the final sequence.
DeHaan led MSU with 20 points and eight rebounds while Johnson recorded a double-double with 14 points and 12 rebounds. Barlow led the Irish with 18 points and seven rebounds while Schrader finished with 12 points and 14 rebounds.
Merchant had challenged DeHaan to have a big game after two disappointing outings and she responded.
“She played extremely hard tonight,” Merchant said. “I thought she was very aggressive at both ends of the floor. She showed a lot of heart coming back from a rolled ankle.”
