Later that night, senior guard Porschè Poole and freshman guard Kiana Johnson called out their teammates for being selfish, and Poole made sure to meet with head coach Suzy Merchant to find answers.

“I definitely think it was a turning point,” Merchant said. “You get to that point where you lose a few in a row, and you’ve had enough. There’s a point where kids just get angry enough that they put a stop to it.”

The solution became inserting Poole and little-used sophomore guard Klarissa Bell into the starting lineup and the results have paid off in a big way.

MSU has now won seven of eight games since the change — including three wins against ranked opponents — and following Sunday’s 76-57 victory over Northwestern, the Spartans clinched a second-place finish in the conference.

Merchant has said on multiple occasions that she wishes her team could play the Illinois game over again, but Poole said the team’s recent success and Bell’s transition to the starting lineup might not have happened without the loss.

“You never think you’re going to drop four games in a row,” Poole said. “But (we) did, and I’m proud of my team. We fought back and
made this February run and great things are happening for us.”

Looking back on the team’s recent success, Johnson and Merchant both attributed said the team’s winning stretch to one word — fight.

“It just shows us that as long as we fight we can do anything,” Johnson said. “That’s how we’ve been playing these last few games — just fighting together, fighting as a team, winning as a team and in this conference, anything can happen.”

The Spartans hope one of the things that can happen as a result of their resilience is a return trip to the NCAA Tournament.

MSU has been one of the teams on the bubble for weeks, and even though a number of analysts have moved the Spartans into their projected brackets, Merchant said the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee’s decisions are tough to anticipate.

“With those people you don’t know, you just don’t know,” she said. “The best thing we can do for ourselves is win the next one and get to 20. That’s not a bad number to get to. So we’re just going to move forward and whatever happens, happens, but we’re … going to do everything we can to make sure they rule us in and not out.”