The term “resilience” is defined as “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change,” according to Merriam-Webster.

The Michigan State men’s basketball team showed a lot of resiliency and mental fortitude in Tuesday night’s 80-67 win over Nebraska.

Following a collapse against Iowa on Saturday afternoon in which the Spartans lost to the Hawkeyes in overtime despite leading by double-digits with less than a minute to play in the game, Michigan State got off to a horrid start in the first half against Nebraska.

Against Nebraska, MSU did not make a single field goal from the 14:00 mark until the 6:16 mark of the first half when senior forward Malik Hall finally put the ball through the hoop. The Cornhuskers put together a 17-2 run before Hall’s basket, with a pair of free throws from senior guard Tyson Walker being the only points for the Spartans during that stretch.

Michigan State found itself down by as many as 15 points in the first half, and by halftime, Nebraska had a strong 12-point lead, 38-26. Michigan State struggled from the field, shooting a putrid 10-for-36 overall in the first 20 minutes of play (27.8%), including 4-for-12 from 3-point range (33.3%). MSU also struggled to defend, allowing Nebraska to make 57.7% of its first-half shots (15-for-26). The Cornhuskers dominated in the paint, 20-8, and the Spartans did not seem to have any answers.

Michigan State would find those solutions in the second half, though. In what was certainly a tale of two halves, the Spartans flipped a switch in the final 20 minutes of play, getting hot from 3-point range, defending better and eventually stealing all of the momentum away from Nebraska.

When asked by the Big Ten Network in a postgame interview about the defensive adjustments in the second half, Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo was honest, as he always is.

“It was really complicated, we decided to do a bunch of different things, you know, so we went in the lab and we said, ‘Will somebody please guard somebody?” Izzo said boisterously and somewhat facetiously. “That’s all we did.”

As for how it actually happened, Michigan State and Nebraska traded buckets in the opening couple of minutes of the second half. MSU sophomore guard/wing Jaden Akins then hit a pair of 3-pointers, scoring six quick points for the Spartans and cutting the Cornhuskers’ lead to just seven points. However, Nebraska guard Sam Griesel answered with a 3-pointer of his own to push the Huskers’ lead back up to double-digits, 48-38, with 16:29 remaining to play.

After a couple more minutes of gameplay, with both teams going on small runs in spurts, Nebraska once again took a 10-point lead after junior guard Keisei Tominaga drilled a 3-pointer. That gave the Cornhuskers a 55-45 lead with 14:01 left on the game clock.

From that point forward, it was all Spartans. Michigan State caught fire, making six of its nine shots from the 13:29 mark to the the 7:26 mark of the first half, including three triples from Hall, Walker and graduate senior forward Joey Hauser. Meanwhile, Nebraska went ice cold from the field, missing eight shots in a row from the 13:14 point to the 6:32 point of the second half. The result was a 15-1 run for MSU, which gave the Spartans a 60-56 lead with just under seven-and-half minutes left to play.

Tominga finally broke the drought for the Cornhuskers, making it a two-point game at 60-58 with 6:03 remaining, but Akins immediately responded with another 3-pointer. That started a 15-3 run for MSU, giving the Spartans a commanding 75-61 lead with 2:02 left to play. Redshirt freshman guard Sam Hoiberg finally got Nebraska back on the board with a pair of free throws at the 1:46 mark, but a jumper by junior point guard A.J. Hoggard, and yet another 3-pointer by Akins (his fifth of the game), stretched MSU’s lead to 80-63 with just 32 seconds left to play.

While Nebraska did score the final four points of the contest, there was no miracle comeback like there was in Iowa City last weekend. MSU closed out the game on an extremely impressive 35-12 run in the last 14 minutes of gameplay. What happened in Iowa didn’t matter. The Spartans did not dwell on that or the poor first half against Nebraska. Instead, MSU found a way to win through adversity.