East Lansing, Mich. - Michigan State ended an erratic regular season with an erratic but memorable 77-67 Senior Day victory over Maryland on Sunday at Breslin Center.

With the win, head coach Tom Izzo set the record for most coaching career wins with a Big Ten school at 663, breaking Bob Knight’s mark.

Izzone Members held up “663” cards in the final seconds of the game. Walk-on guard Steven Izzo collected the game ball and, with tears in his eyes, gave it to his father, with a hug.

Izzo took the microphone and thanked Michigan State fans before Senior Day ceremonies began.

“When you look at how you’ve been for all these years, 27 years, you’ve had to put up with me 27 years, that’s a long time,” Izzo told the crowd, while drawing applause. “But at the same time, I want to honor these seniors. They’ve been through Hell, now. I think of some guys who spent two years through COVID, haven’t been able to go to classes, have gone through 120 nose swabs. They have hung in there. They battled back.

“We won some big games and we lost some games we shouldn’t have lost. Sometimes years don’t go exactly like you want. But we ain’t dead yet. We ain’t dead yet. I’ve been here before!”

Izzo told the Breslin audience, with a laugh, that he was concerned for a moment that this Senior Day game would end up like Duke’s anticlimactic loss to North Carolina, Saturday on Mike Krzyzewski Night.

Michigan State saw leds of 18-1 and 46-24 whittled to 61-58 with 7:14 left.

But junior forward Malik Hall and senior guard Gabe Brown provided the push to secure victory for Michigan State, which improved to 20-11 overall and 11-9 in the Big Ten.

Maryland fell to 15-16 and 7-13 in the Big Ten.

Michigan State will play Maryland again in the Big Ten Tournament on Thursday. The winner will play the No. 1 seed, Wisconsin or Illinois, in the quarterfinals at 11:30 a.m. on Friday.

Junior forward Malik Hall led Michigan State with 17 points on 7-of-11 shooting, with 12 of those coming in the second half. He scored seven straight at crunch time, turning a 68-60 lead into a 75-62 lead with 1:59 left.

Tyson Walker scored 13 points to go with five assists and no turnovers.

Marcus Bingham scored 12 points and had a team-high 11 rebounds. Bingham secured the double-double with more than 15 minutes to play, but Michigan State went small with Hall and Joey Hauser playing most of the final 10 minutes to match up with Maryland’s surging, smaller lineup.

Hauser finished with 3 points and five rebounds.

Brown had 10 points, including seven straight to answer a 19-2 Maryland run.

Brown stopped the bleeding with an awkward runner in the lane to make it 63-58 with 6:40 left.

Then Brown nailed a step-back 3-pointer (66-58 with 5:35 left) and hit a pair of foul shots to make it 68-58 with 5:20 left.

Eric Ayala led Maryland with 19 points.

(More to come at SpartanMag.com).