Carson Cooper scored a career-high 20 points and grabbed 11 rebounds to help No. 15 Michigan State hold on for a 66-60 win over Ohio State in East Lansing, Mich., on Sunday afternoon.
Jordan Scott scored 12 and Jeremy Fears Jr. chipped in 11 for the Spartans (22-5, 12-4 Big Ten), who have won consecutive games for the first time this month.
Bruce Thornton led the Buckeyes (17-10, 9-7) with 32 points and Christoph Tilly added 10.
Ohio State trailed by 10 with 1:35 left and 63-56 with 56 seconds to go but made it 63-60 with 14.3 seconds left. Scott then hit one of two free throws with nine seconds remaining, and after a Thornton miss, Cooper put down two from the free-throw line to close out the scoring.
Michigan State was down 45-43 with 10 minutes left before an 18-6 stretch gave the Spartans a 61-51 lead with 2:50 left.
The short-handed Buckeyes fell to 0-9 against Quad 1 opponents.
Ohio State was already without second-leading scorer John Mobley Jr. (15.1 ppg) for a third straight game due to a hand injury. He was joined on the list of unavailable players by third-leading scorer Devin Royal (14.0) because of illness. He scored a season-high 25 points in the 86-69 win over No. 24 Wisconsin on Tuesday.
Yet, despite forward Amare Bynum picking up his second foul 1:52 into the game and scoring just two points in 13 first-half minutes, the Buckeyes managed a 26-23 halftime lead thanks to Thornton.
His 16 points came on 7-of-11 shooting from the floor plus a free throw, while the rest of the team hit only 5 of 16 shots.
Thornton’s seventh point at the 9:57 mark moved him past Herb Williams (2,011 points) for No. 2 on the program’s career scoring list trailing only Dennis Hopson (2,096).
Meanwhile, the Spartans had their lowest-scoring first half at home this season when they shot 29.6%. It was the fifth time in six games they have trailed at halftime.
