EAST LANSING - It's all about the spurt.
The spurt was key Saturday night for the Michigan men's basketball team as it used a 17-4 second-half run to pull ahead of Michigan State for a 74-61 victory.
Because of the vagaries of the conference schedule, there are two teams the No. 13 Wolverines (5-3 Big Ten, 14-5 overall) only face once in conference play. The Spartans (4-4, 11-5), oddly enough, are one of them. Because of the natural rivalry between the two teams, however, another game was scheduled, next Saturday at Crisler Arena.
The fact that conference position was not on the line did nothing to lessen the fervor of the players on either side, or of the 15,138 fans at the Breslin Center.
The Wolverines' run early in the second half gave them a 51-38 lead with just under 12 minutes to play, a sizable deficit for the Spartans to make up.
Undeterred, however, the Spartans challenged the Wolverines down the stretch, hoping to take advantage of sophomore forward Robert Traylor and junior forward Maurice Taylor, who were both in foul trouble.
With Michigan's lead at 56-47, Taylor was whistled for an offensive foul - his fifth - for clearing out Spartans sophomore forward Antonio Smith on a drive to the bucket.
Taylor took a seat after scoring a game-high 18 points in just 20 minutes of action.
The Spartans cut the lead to six just seconds after Taylor's exit, when junior guard Brandun Hughes fouled Michigan State senior forward Jon Garavaglia on a layup. The bucket was good and Garavaglia hit from the stripe, making the score 56-50.
When Weathers, a senior, hit Smith on a back-door cut just more than a minute later, the Spartans had whittled the margin to four, and the crowd was on its feet, green-and-white pom-pons flailing.
But sophomore guard Louis Bullock quickly answered, nailing one of his two 3-pointers on the day to push the lead to seven, and when a turnover led to a jam by junior forward Jerod Ward on the next possession, the Wolverines had suffocated the Michigan State threat.
The contest turned into a free-throw fest in the waning moments, but not before Michigan State freshman Mateen Cleaves drew Traylor's fifth foul on a drive to the hoop.
The Spartans, however, were unable to put their time between Michigan's trips to the line to good use, and junior forward Maceo Baston's hit from the stripe with 19.3 seconds left provided the final 74-61 margin. The 13-point win certainly could not have been predicted at halftime, when the score was knotted at 30.
The nip-and-tuck first half saw the Wolverines move out to a five-point lead with 8:44 to play, but the Spartans were able to pull even at the half.
Taylor's two free throws with just under a minute remaining put the Wolverines up, 30-27, but the Spartans came right back, after senior guard Ray Weathers nailed a 3-pointer to tie the game going into the break.
Both teams started the second half as they played the first, with neither side able to gain an advantage for the first 2 1/2 minutes.
But when Bullock found Taylor for a jam with 17:05 to play, the Wolverines were off to the races.
Baston scored on two consecutive trips down the floor, the second of his two buckets nudging the Wolverines' lead to 42-36.
That was when Bullock, Michigan's leading scorer, got into the act.
Bullock banged in a jumper with 14:06 to play, and was the beneficiary of some solid defense on the ensuing Michigan State possession.
When the Spartans went to senior forward Jon Garavaglia in the post, the Wolverines' trademark post-double defense forced him to cough up the ball. Hughes came up with it, and he found the streaking Bullock with a long outlet pass for a layup, and a 47-36 lead.
The Spartans called a 20-second timeout in an effort to stem the bleeding, and although two Garavaglia free throws temporarily stopped Michigan's onslaught, a turnaround jumper by Taylor in the post and an authoritative dunk by Traylor gave the Wolverines their biggest lead of the night, 51-38, with 11:59 to play.
Michigan coach Steve Fisher could not have been happier with the timing of his squad's run.
"We got our spurt through defense," Fisher said. "They gave us a few more post touches than we've gotten, and we got more baskets from our post players."
Taylor came out of the contest brimming with confidence after hitting five of nine shots, eight of nine free throws, and grabbing seven boards.
"No one's going to stop me when I'm on," he said. "Unless you play zone and double me, I really can score at will.
"All of our post players are like that."
JOE WESTRATE/Daily
Maceo Baston dunks home two of his 12 points in Saturday's game.