Trice hears Carver crowd, daggers the Hawkeyes

IOWA CITY — You won't see Michigan State guard Travis Trice here again. And, yes, you should be thankful for that after the senior's performance Thursday night.

Trice hit 7 of 8 from the 3-point arc and spurred the Spartans to a 75-61 victory before 15,054 fans at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

You tried to get into Trice's head. He heard you. You saw what happened.

'Someone in the first row said something to me in the first half that kind of made me mad,' said Trice, who led the Spartans with 25 points. 'So, they can blame it on them.'

What was said?

'I can't repeat what they said,' Trice said. 'They said something and it kind of got me going.'

Iowa held a 46-42 lead with 12:40 left when Trice fed forward Matt Costello for one of his four assists. Next time down, Trice set up forward Branden Dawson for an alley-oop dunk to tie the game 46-46. Then, he hit a pair of free throws and swished a 3-pointer from the corner for a 50-48 lead MSU would not relinquish.

Trice completed a one-man 13-point run with another trey for a 58-51 lead with 7:57 left in the game. The Carver crowd groaned when Trice caught the ball at the arc and without a defender within 10 parquet court tiles.

The ESPN cameras caught Trice smiling after this one, which ended his three-minute reign of brilliant shooting and put MSU in control.

'It was weird,' Trice said. 'I caught the ball and I heard like moaning, like 'ooohhhh.' I'm like, 'OK, thanks.' That's a fun feeling. I'm more excited about the win and how we responded being down 11 (39-28) at the half. Other teams might crumble, I just like how we fought.'

MSU coach Tom Izzo referenced former Michigan State stars Morris Peterson and Draymond Green for comparisons to Trice's white-hot three minutes.

'The way he shot it, the pullbacks he had, the bounce he had, taking to the hole and the good defense,' Izzo said, 'he just looked like he had a lot more bounce. Those pullbacks got shots for himself.'

There was the heckling from the first row, but other than that, Trice loves Carver-Hawkeye. He had been fighting some illness and an ankle injury (he hit just 1 of 8 in 24 minutes against Indiana in the Spartans' last outing), but said it all came together in Thursday's shootaround at Carver.

'I love playing here, it's one of my favorite places to play,' he said. 'This is one of the most hostile crowds in the Big Ten. They'll talk to you. Also, when you're playing a great team like that, it just adds to it. It's a shooter's gym. I like the backdrop here. It stays the same the whole game because of the way it's built. It's a combination of all those things that makes it a great place to play.'

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