Kiana Johnson did her best to carry the No. 25 MSU women’s basketball team to a win in its first-ever trip to Nebraska tonight. In their first game as a ranked team since the end of 2011, the Spartans fell to Nebraska 59-54.
As the No. 25 MSU women’s basketball program travels to play Nebraska tonight, it can only hope the second-ever meeting with the Cornhuskers goes as well as the first.
After hanging on the fringe for most of this season, the MSU women’s basketball team has cracked the Associated Press Top 25 poll this week. The No. 25 Spartans (16-2 overall, 4-1 Big Ten)are ranked for the first time since the final poll of the 2010-11 season.
The MSU women’s basketball team kicked off a challenging four-game stretch that features three road games with a 56-46 win on Sunday at Indiana behind sophomore guard Kiana Johnson’s15-point performance.
An impressive all-around outing from sophomore guard Kiana Johnson powered MSU to a 56-46 win at Indiana Sunday afternoon. Johnson paced MSU (16-2 overall, 4-1 Big Ten) with 15 points while adding five assists and four rebounds. The Spartans’ win begins a stretch that includes three road trips in the next four games.
Klarissa Bell announced her presence at Breslin Center in dramatic fashion Thursday night.
If Klarissa Bell, MSU’s leading scorer, didn’t have the attention of the visiting Hawkeyes when they got off the bus, they definitely did when her half court heave tied Thursday’s game at 25 at the halftime buzzer. Behind Bell’s career-high 25 points, the Spartans downed Iowa 65-54. Tied at 51 apiece with 3:37 left to play, MSU took advantage of a 9-0 run over the next three minutes to pull away — led by Bell and the outside shooting of junior forward Annalise Pickrel. Pickrel was fouled with 59 seconds left and hit one of two free throws to give the Spartans a 13-point lead at which point Iowa stopped fouling and let the time run out.
The Hawkeyes jumped out to an early 8-2 lead as MSU struggled shooting from the floor in the early going. The Spartans battled through a shooting slump that dipped to 21.4 percent at one point halfway through the first 20 minutes and kept the margin within five.
The Spartans hung on late to close out a win in their first road game of the Big Ten season Sunday evening, knocking off Illinois 79-75. Though the up-and-down pace favored the high-scoring Illini for most of the game, the balanced scoring and defensive disposition of the MSU women’s basketball team prevailed in Champaigne, Ill.
On Sunday the MSU women’s basketball team will hit the road for the first time in the young Big Ten season to take on a high-scoring Illinois squad. In a strength versus strength matchup, the defensive-minded Spartans (13-2 Big Ten, 1-1 Overall), who allow 45.6 points per game, will be tested by the Illini offense that averages 72.7 points per contest led star forward Karisma Penn. Four Illinois (9-6, 2-1) starters average 13 points or more, headlined by Penn’s 20-points and 10-plus rebounds per contest.
Following the Spartans’ 66-51 victory in the Big Ten season-opener against Minnesota last Thursday, some players and members of the media questioned whether the MSU women’s hoops team deserved to be ranked. It was a legitimate discussion at the time.
The Spartans hung tight for a while, eventually whittling the Penn State lead to seven early in the second half, but the Nittany Lions never lost control of the contest, eventually growing the lead to 26 points going to win 76-55.
The closest MSU managed to get to visiting No. 9 Penn State in the second half was seven points, and that was less than 30 seconds into the half. From there, the Nittany Lions (12-2 overall, 2-0 Big Ten) grew the lead to as much as 26 en route to a commanding 76-55 win over MSU (13-2 overall, 1-1 Big Ten). The Spartans kept it close early, trading blows with PSU in the opening minutes, but an 11-0 run halfway through the first half put the Nittany Lions in the driver’s seat the rest the game.
After sprinting out to a frantic pace in the opening minutes thanks to Penn State’s fullcourt pressure, the Spartans headed into the locker room down 34-25.
After being deadlocked at halftime, the MSU women’s basketball team outscored Minnesota by 15 points in the second half to win the its Big Ten opener for the third consecutive season.The bench carried the Spartans in a 66-51 victory in what started as a typical grind- it-out Big Ten-style contest.
Just as it has all season, the MSU women’s basketball team relied on a superior rebounding effort and a stout defense Saturday afternoon to pull out a 57-47 win over visiting Temple in the Spartans’ non-conference finale.
The MSU women’s basketball team won’t be returning from Sin City empty-handed. The Spartans claimed the 2012 South Point Holiday Hoops Classic championship in Las Vegas Thursday evening after beating Texas Tech 50-48 in overtime. On Wednesday, the first day of the two-game tournament, MSU (11-1 overall) knocked off Oregon State, 49-35, with a dominating defensive effort. With six minutes left in the game, the Spartans held a 38-31 lead, before Texas Tech (8-2) came storming back and cut the MSU lead to one with less than two minutes to play. Sophomore guard Kiana Johnson, who made her first appearance for MSU this season on Sunday following a nine-game suspension to start the season, came up clutch for the Spartans in the tournament final.
The MSU women’s basketball team didn’t need help from lady luck Wednesday night in Las Vegas in its first game of the 2012 South Point Holiday Hoops Classic, cruising to a 49-35 win over Oregon State. In Suzy Merchant’s 500th career game as a head coach, the Spartans (10-1 overall) never trailed Oregon State (6-5) at any point in the contest.
Kiana Johnson had spent exactly three months dreaming of this day, but when she finally awoke, she almost hit the snooze button. “I woke up at like 7 (AM) and I was going to go back to sleep for 10 minutes, and I’m like ‘what am I doing?
The Spartans went 41.4 percent from the floor and 86.7 percent from the free throw line as they led 40-11 at the end of the first half, but the second half was a different story, as MSU was outscored by the Mastodons 25-24.