Women's basketball: Spartans upset Ohio State

COLUMBUS, Ohio - All season, Michigan State women's coach Suzy Merchant has implored Brittney Thomas to become more offensive-minded.

The junior point guard did just that Sunday as she scored a career-high 19 points - including a basket to send the game to overtime and two clinching free throws in the extra period - to lead the Spartans to a 71-68 victory over seventh-ranked Ohio State.

"It's always a big game to get ready for postseason where you're going to be away and you're going to have huge crowds that are rooting against you ... ," said Thomas, who hit 7 of 11 shots from the field and added five assists and seven rebounds. "It's a win we needed."

It was a third victory over a top-10 opponent this season for MSU (19-8, 10-6 Big Ten), which now sits alone in second place behind the Buckeyes after Purdue's loss Sunday at Illinois.

The Spartans became the first team this season to defeat Ohio State (26-4, 14-3) in 19 games in Columbus. MSU also ended the Buckeyes' streak of 24 straight wins at Value City Arena and became just the second unranked team in 111 games to defeat them on their home court.

"To do it on the road and in this environment, hopefully we can build off of that," said Merchant, whose team has won eight of its last nine games.

MSU plays Purdue (14-13, 9-7) at 7 p.m. Thursday in West Lafayette, Ind. A win over the Boilermakers and a loss that night by Wisconsin - which is tied for second with Purdue - would assure MSU of the No. 2 seed in the upcoming Big Ten Tournament. The Badgers are at Penn State on Thursday.

Sunday, the Spartans led by as many as 13 with less than 10 minutes to play before the Buckeyes rallied. Samantha Prahalis' layup with 2:49 left gave Ohio State its first lead of the second half, and she split a pair of free throws with 21 seconds left to put her team ahead 60-58.

With five seconds to go in regulation, Thomas drove the left side of the lane and hit a pull-up jump shot with a defender in her face to tie the score.

"She's not a kid that says 'give it to me' - she does a great job of taking what is there," Merchant said of Thomas. "She took the shots that were given to her."

Ohio State, which missed two shots to win the game in the final moments of regulation, built its largest lead of the game at four in the overtime before Thomas hit a perimeter jumper to spark an 8-0 MSU run. Porsche Poole scored on two drives - the second with 1:10 left in the overtime giving the Spartans the lead for good - and Aisha Jefferson added a banked-in jump shot with 33 seconds remaining.

After Prahalis hit a 3-pointer, Thomas made two foul shots with 15.3 seconds. A 3-point attempt by the Buckeyes' Sarah Schulze was short and wide of the mark as time expired.

Jantel Lavender, who led the Buckeyes with 24 points and 11 rebounds, said she was stunned by the loss, before the second-largest crowd (11,827) to witness a women's game at Value City Arena.

"I'm very surprised," she said. "I'm just shocked. We should have pulled that out."

Prahalis, who had 17 points, took the blame for suddenly losing her touch at the line.

"I couldn't close it out," said Prahalis, who had hit 47 straight free throws coming in but missed seven of 11 foul shots.

Lykendra Johnson added 14 points and Kalisha Keane 10 for the Spartans, who have won four in a row.

Thomas said there was never a point where she thought the Spartans wouldn't win. In fact, she had to tell teammates to temper their zeal.

"We all had that energy of that adrenaline going so when we came out of timeouts, (I said) 'Let's calm down. We're good. We're right where we need to be. Just kind of settle down and play hard,'" she said.