Michigan State has won five straight games — all of which were Quad 1 opportunities — and six of its last seven. Somewhat surprisingly, the Spartans have led at halftime just one time during that stretch.

“We’re behind in some of these games at halftime,” said MSU head coach Tom Izzo. “You know why? Because they’re all good teams.”

Sunday’s 71-62 win over No. 11 Wisconsin was the Spartans’ fourth ranked win in as many contests. For context, Michigan State hasn’t had a stretch of four consecutive top 25 teams since the 2019-20 season. That ended up being the last four games of the year, where MSU won all of them to win a share of the Big Ten title.

Indeed, MSU hadn't beaten any other opponents that are currently ranked prior to this four-game stretch. The only team it had even played was current No. 18 Memphis back in Maui.

It doesn’t really add up.

A team that has led once at halftime in its last nine games — a mere two-point advantage against Purdue — should not stand at 15-3 in conference play and be one win away from clinching a title.

On Sunday, the Badgers were the ones on top by two midway through the game.

“We’re (only) down two points,” said forward Coen Carr on what the mood was like in the locker room at the break. “We had a bad first half and we were only down two points. That’s what we were saying. We know we’ve got a whole ‘nother 20 minutes to play. That half was over. We looked at the film, plays that we needed to fix, and things we know we needed to do better.”

“Basketball is a game of two halves,” said guard Jaden Akins, who had a team-high 19 points in Sunday’s win. “First half, we’re trying to see what the other team is doing. We’re trying to be aggressive, but once the second half comes, we know we’ve got to put our best foot forward and that’s what we’ve been doing.”

“I think that it’s also just being able to kind of self-reflect on the first half,” said center Carson Cooper. “I think that’s what we kind of do better in the second half. We’re able to kind of bounce ideas off each other at halftime and really understand how they’re playing."

Cooper also mentioned that Wisconsin's offense is strange.

"It’s kind of slow-developing and all that, so for us it took a second to get used to that and then when we did, we kind of got back in the game and in that second half we were able to just go out there and trust our prep and everything," he said.

MSU ended up being plus-11 in the second half, which also makes the Spartans plus-83 total in the final 20 minutes of its last seven games. If the loss to Indiana gets filtered out, it’s plus-84 in MSU’s six most recent wins despite a minus-24 mark in those first halves.