And for a majority of the night, it was MSU freshman forward Deyonta Davis' defense on Hayes, which made the difference.

"I had confidence in myself," said Davis, who finished with six points, nine rebounds and three blocks on the night. "We was going over in practice and when we got into the game, I started listening to what the coaches were telling me and I just followed the scouting report."

In addition to studying and being prepared for Hayes' moves, Davis said he fed off of a quote he saw of Hayes saying it was easy to score against him last time and used that as motivation for this game. 

As the game got going, it was clear Hayes was bothered by Davis' length, as well as a Breslin Center crowd chanting "Nigel" for a majority of the second half.

"Deyonta has grown up a lot since the first game," MSU head basketball coach Tom Izzo said. "We did a little more help and thought we would put (Davis) on (Hayes). ... But with Deyonta, we wanted to press up and make his length maybe bother (Hayes) and get some help from our wings, which I thought we did a great job. Deyonta deserves a lot of credit."

At the same time, though, Izzo said it was a total team effort which ultimately allowed the Spartans to hold the Badgers to just a 20-of-59 shooting performance (33.9 percent).

"Don't get me wrong, Deyonta's doing a hell of a job, but it's a mixed bag of nuts too," Izzo said. "We're cheating up with some people, moving some people around."

MSU senior forward Colby Wollenman has had a huge hand in mentoring Davis all season long, and he said everyone was pumped for Davis' defense Thursday night against Hayes.

"Everyone was talking about him, raving about him, congratulating him for shutting down Hayes," Wollenman said. "Because really, for all intents and purposes, he just locked him down and didn't give him anything. ... Coach even specifically called out Eron (Harris) and DD for locking down Hayes and (Bronson) Koenig."

Wollenman also said it was a focus Davis took all week, and it paid off.

"I feel he almost took a personal vendetta out," Wollenman said. "He said his focus was on Hayes. I think he spent a lot of time this week watching film, scouting Hayes. ... It was a collective effort. Our coaches gave us an awesome, awesome scouting report on Hayes and really it worked to perfection exactly how they said it would and DD did a great job of following it. There was almost a different look in him today."