East Lansing, Mich. - For a team that supposedly has no go-to player, Michigan State’s Tyson Walker had an amazing amount of confident visualization at crunch time on Saturday.

He’s been here long enough. He’s passed up enough shots. He has set up others and waited his turn. No one else has come to the forefront as a go-to guy. His time came, in the final seconds of MSU’s 68-65 victory over Purdue at Breslin Center.

Walker had a breakthrough scoring binge last week in a loss to Illinois. Then the Spartans were blown out at Iowa on Tuesday.

The Spartans had lost five of six games. They answered brilliantly with 39 strong minutes of basketball as an underdog against No. 4 Purdue.

But then when Purdue battled back from an 11-point deficit to tie the game at 65-65 and silence a worried Breslin Center crowd with :30 seconds left, Tyson Walker had a smile on his face.

A smile?

“We got this,” Walker said to Max Christie and Gabe Brown.

They’ve got this?

In a February of disappointments, amid an unraveling season of slumps and freshman walls, the transfer from Northeastern says “We got this”?

They sure did. Because he sure did.

A.J. Hoggard, MSU’s starting point guard and best distributor, was knocked out of the game in the final minute with a minor leg injury. He’s fine. But he couldn’t finish this game.

Tom Izzo didn’t have to make a decision as to which quarterback he wanted to use. The ball was going to be in Walker’s hands, and everyone felt good about it.

Walker has been playing good basketball since coming out of the starting lineup and playing off the bench against Indiana five games ago.

“We’ve been waiting on this for awhile,” said junior center Julius Marble. “I feel like early in the season, he didn’t have that confidence the way he needed to, and he got in his own way.”

What changed?

“He just started playing basketball, started having fun with it, and you can see that,” Marble said.

Walker might not be as good of a passer as Hoggard. The offense might not run as smoothly when he is operating it, compared to Hoggard.

But when down to your last possession, it helps if the quarterback can create his own shot. Walker can do that extremely well, we’re learning.

During Michigan State’s final time out, with :16 seconds left, Izzo drew up a simple screen-and-roll-replace option for Walker, with Malik Hall rolling and Joey Hauser available popping out on the right wing as the replace man.

It marked the first time in the game that Hall and Hauser were on the court at the same time.

“When they went small, you put yourself in a tough spot with Hall and Hauser because now if you go regular ball screen defense, now you have to rotate to them,” Painter said. “So we were going to switch all five.”

That meant 6-foot-10 Purdue center Trevion Williams would be left alone covering 6-foot Walker on the perimeter.

“Trevion has done a good job all year being able to switch,” Painter said.

The same can’t be said for Walker on the flip side. Twenty-eight games into the season, he’s not had many late-game quarterbacking moments. But he wanted this one. And it was time for this team to give him the chance. Walker could see it coming.

“We knew they were going to switch five and we wanted that ball screen so we could get the switch,” Walker said, “and just for me to make a play.”

Marble, the engineering major, looked at the geometry of the play while Izzo drew it up in the huddle, and had his doubts.

“We were talking on the bench and I was like, ‘I don’t think that’s going to be there,’” Marble said. “They hadn’t really switched all day but I had a feeling they were going to switch it out.

“Markie (Bingham) and some other guys were like, ‘Look, if they get the switch on Tyson, he’s going to hit this shot!’”

Tyson’s got this, they told him.

Marble changed his mind. He climbed aboard.

“So we were all on the bench like, ‘This is going in,’” Marble said.

Walker is averaging a modest 8.1 points per game, a far cry from the 19.3 he averaged last year at Northeastern. But he is shooting a sizzling 56 percent from 3-point range. That efficiency screams for more opportunities - like the ones he made for himself in the second half last week against Illinois, and like this game-winner when this team needed it so badly against Purdue.

“Tyson’s been shooting it well,” Izzo said. “We wanted the ball in his hands because we thought he could get a shot. I thought they might switch out, so we had Joey popping out, and we had Malik rolling up. There were three options on the play.”

Hall rolled, but he didn’t post up hard. He seemed to know Walker was going to pull the trigger.

Hauser popped out on the right wing. But Purdue kept a defender on him. This was a case of the stretch four, Hauser, having an impact even without touching the ball. He drew defense away from Walker, which put more responsibility and worry on the big man guarding Walker.

Painter said big Williams had some help off the dribble in case little Walker drove. But not much. Not with Hauser stretching his man on the right wing, and Purdue’s Sasha Stefanovic sticking with Gabe Brown in the left corner.

Williams was worried about the drive, but had to come out to honor Walker as a shooter. It’s so hard to do both against a quick little man who can seriously do both, and has teammates around him who can shoot.

It was perhaps the first time all season that Michigan State had a legitimate shooting and scoring threat at point guard, with shooting threats at all four of the other positions. These guys have been on the team together all year, of course, but their talents and trends and assignments haven’t crossed paths for a crunch time moment prior to this one.

There have been times when Hauser and Brown weren’t shooting threats. But they were by 2 p.m. on Saturday afternoon in East Lansing.

Hauser has found a nice groove as a stretch four. He is up to 40.5 percent on the year from 3-point range, and is 8-of-14 (57 percent) in the last six games from deep.

Brown is coming off the worst shooting slump of his basketball life. Brown was 4-for-27 from 3-point range in the previous four games, and had been ice cold for 10 straight games, other than one hot day at Rutgers on Feb. 5.

Brown, Michigan State’s leading scorer on the year, had hit double figures only once in the previous eight games.

But Brown bounced back in this game with 13 points against Purdue. He was 3-of-5 from 3-point range.

Brown started the game with a 3-pointer from the right wing to give the Spartans a 3-0 lead and set the vibe right for himself, the Spartans and a raucous afternoon crowd.

Brown added a 3-pointer off a Marcus Bingham offensive rebound to give the Spartans a 10-8 lead. And later, Brown sent in an alley-oop dunk from Hoggard to make it 24-21 with 6:44 left in the first half and serve notice that he and the Spartans weren’t going away on this day.

“Why does he have to do it against us?” Painter said with a laugh after the game. “He (Brown) a good shooter and shooters only need that one make, and that crowd got him going. The punch he gave them really helped them. That was huge.”

Brown is a streak scorer. But in end-game situations, he is more of a spot-up threat to stretch a defense rather than create offense for himself. In other words, he’s kind of a decoy or a satellite option.

So, even while having a hot day, it was best to keep Brown planted in the corner, stretching Stefanovic away from Tyson Walker. Brown was fine with that.

“I know Tyson’s moves like the back of my hand and I knew he was going to step back (and shoot),” Brown said. “I wasn’t even going to crash (the boards), because I knew it was good.”

Wait. Brown had a second thought about that comment and what Izzo might think of it. Izzo frowns on guys not crashing the boards.

Film shows that Brown did go to the offensive boards. A little bit.

“But I knew Sasha was going to stick on me,” Brown said.

Didn’t matter. Tyson’s got this.

Marble, on the bench due to the small lineup, could see it develop.

“They switched out and Trevion had his hands down,” Marble said. “And Tyson did the step-back move and the rest is history.”

“When Tyson came open,” Izzo said, “he was open enough.”

The little guy doesn’t need a lot of room for his quick release and deep range.

“And give him credit,” Izzo said. “He knocked it down.”

Tyson knew he would - a week after he initially visualized this kind of ending.

Against the Illini, Walker erupted for 24 second-half points while scoring 26. He brought Michigan State back from a 16-point deficit to within 76-74 with :47 seconds left.

He had the same smile and confidence on that day. But Illinois’ Trent Frazier ended the vision by nailing a 3-pointer to give Illinois a 5-point lead with :23 seconds left. Walker had to wait for another chance. But in his mind, it was already a done deal. The only question was who would be the victim?

When Purdue’s Williams tied this game at 65-65 on a tip-in with :30 seconds to play, Walker set his jaw.

“I just knew, in my head, if they score, I’m going to come down and make a shot,” Walker said. “I felt the same way when we played Illinois, but they scored that time. I was like, ‘Today, I’m going to make the shot and win a game like that.’ That’s why I smiled.”

That’s what this team needed. To win this game, to end the losing streak. To gain confidence. The Spartans needed one guy to have that belief, that skill. He’s always had it, just not always in a green and white uniform. But he’s done enough, in some of the games, and many of the practices, that Bingham, Hoggard and a slew of other teammates knew he was the best guy to make that play in the final seconds.

Christie might become the go-to guy some day, either off the dribble, or off the catch. Brown doesn’t quite have all of the triple-threat dimensions to be that guy.

But a point guard who can stick it? There isn’t a more valuable commodity in a late-game situation.

Walker has those skills. And, through the course of this season, he has gained the confidence of his teammates and coaches. They knew as well as he did that he was going to sink the dagger.

Hall as a pass option as the roll man? Hauser as the replace man? Brown in the corner?

You’ll have to pardon Walker.

“I don’t think it mattered,” Walker said after the game. “I was going to shoot it. I was going to shoot it.”

He said it was easily the biggest shot of his basketball life. But thing that felt best was doing it for the team.

"I don’t think we were desperate," he said. "We just kind of in a way felt disrespected. It felt like everybody was giving up on us. So we wanted to prove a point."

He said he had been dreaming of a moment like that, a shot like that, since he was a kid in his back yard, growing up in Westbury, N.Y.

The subtle step-back move is something he’s been crafting as a last-second shot since his freshman year in high school.

All the yelling from Tom Izzo?

“That doesn’t bother me,” Walker said earlier this year. “I’m from New York. Everyone yells in New York.”

When the shot fell and Breslin went crazy, Walker barely noticed.

“Honestly, something is wrong with me,” he said. “I can’t really hear the crowd, most of the time. Honestly. So I didn’t really recognize it.”

Must be a New York state of mind.

“I never hear the crowd,” he said. “Even at away games.

“But after I made it, I smiled. It felt good.”

Tyson’s got this.