Michigan State University
Wisconsin
Men's Hoops Edged By Wisconsin, 64-63
1/12/2002 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Jan 12, 2002
By LARRY LAGE
AP Sports Writer
EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) - The Wisconsin Badgers quietly waited in their locker room waiting to find out if they had won.
"When we heard their fans boo, we knew," Wisconsin's Freddie Owens said with a grin.
The Badgers snapped the nation's longest home winning streak at 53 games, beating No. 25 Michigan State 64-63 Saturday after an alley-oop layup by Kelvin Torbert was disallowed with two-tenths of a second left.
Charlie Wills scored 17 points and Owens had 12, including the go-ahead basket with 25 seconds left for Wisconsin (9-8, 2-2 Big Ten).
Marcus Taylor scored 17 points for the Spartans (9-7, 0-3), who lost their fourth straight and likely will fall out of The Associated Press poll, ending their stay at 71 consecutive weeks dating to the 1997-98 season.
Officials made the decision not to count Torbert's basket after they watched television replays.
Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan went to tell his players the result, but they were already celebrating and waiting to douse him with a bucket of ice water.
"The players roughed me up in the locker room, that's all I can say," said Ryan, who had to get out of his wet suit and into warmups. "I thought just football players did this water cooler thing. The players were pretty happy.
"It was a nice moment."
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Michigan State's loss and Detroit's 75-74 overtime win over Wright State on Saturday, gives the Titans the longest home winning streak at 37 games in Calihan Hall.
Until Saturday, no player on Michigan State's roster had lost a game at home.
"The better team won today," said Michigan State coach Tom Izzo, who agreed with the officials' final decision. "It's disheartening because a great streak has come to an end."
The beginning of the end took place when Wisconsin began chipping away at a 10-point deficit with 15:34 to go.
The Badgers took a 51-49 lead - their first in over 16 minutes - with 8:02 left. Then there were eight lead changes and four ties before the wild finish.
Taylor missed a layup with a minute left, then Owens' short shot gave Wisconsin a 64-62 with 25 seconds remaining.
Spartans freshman Alan Anderson made the first of two free throws with 8.1 seconds left and teammate Aloysius Anagonye grabbed the rebound off the miss and called a timeout with 6.3 seconds left.
Taylor missed a driving layup and the ball bounced out of bounds with .2 seconds left. Anderson lobbed the inbounds to Torbert, who caught the ball and scored in the air.
Thinking the streak was kept alive, students rushed the Breslin Center court to celebrate. However, only a tip-in is allowed with .3 seconds or less remaining.
After an anxious couple of minutes, the officials pulled both coaches together near the scorer's table and informed them that the basket would not count.
"We got just about what we deserved," Izzo said.
The previous team to beat Michigan State at home was Purdue on March 1, 1998. Michigan State, which has reached the Final Four the last three years, won its previous 53 games at home by an average of 21.1 points with just eight of those games decided by less than 10 points.
Wisconsin is 3-1 against ranked teams with wins over Illinois, Marquette and the Spartans.
"This is big, this means a lot," Owens said.
Izzo was disgusted that Wisconsin was able to score 24 points off the Spartans' 16 turnovers.
"We did a miserable job taking care of the basketball," Izzo said. "The points off turnovers were ridiculous."
Michigan State will try to start a new streak at home Wednesday against Purdue, but Izzo said the mystique of the Breslin Center is gone.
"There's a chink in the armor," Izzo said. "People are not going to fear coming in here."
