EAST LANSING, Mich. — Dusty May walked down the Breslin Center tunnel and looked around. Boos and jeers rained down on the Michigan basketball coach with vigor, even more than a typical rivalry game. He smiled. Gave a fist bump. Walked to a seat and sat down, arm across the seat next to him and his right led up. Comfortable, even amid the noise.

His players couldn’t be nearly as comfortable down the stretch of Friday night’s game as No. 3 Michigan blew a 16-point lead against rival Michigan State in the second half. But point guard Elliot Cadeau led the Wolverines to a 83-71 win with a late burst, their first at Breslin Center since Jan. 13, 2018 and their first in the rivalry in four outings.

With the win, Michigan (20-1, 10-1 Big Ten) maintains its tie atop the Big Ten standings with Nebraska and Illinois. Michigan State (19-3, 9-2) is in sole possession of fourth place, just a game behind.

Cadeau scored 17 points and dished six assists for Michigan as forward Yaxel Lendeborg added 26 points and freshman sixth man Trey McKenney scored 10 off the bench, including a pair of big 3s. Eight 3-pointers and a 14-3 lead in second-chance points aided the win.

For No. 7 Michigan State, point guard Jeremy Fears Jr. led the way with 31 points to set a career high while dishing seven assists, while teammates Coen Carr and Jaxon Kohler added 12 and 10, respectively. Jordan Scott added 10. The Spartans rallied back from a poor first-half shooting (7 for 26 from the floor), but ran out of steam down the stretch.

Down big, 42-26, out of halftime, Michigan State coach Tom Izzo made a change. He sent out Scott, a freshman workhorse whose play has wowed teammates and coaches all year, to start the second half in place of shooting guard Divine Ugochukwu. It worked. Carr going for a mid-range and a big dunk that brought the crowd back into the game. Fears drew a foul to make six straight points out of the break.

Michigan center Aday Mara finished off a post move to break the run up, and Lendeborg sprinted down the court for a fast-break dunk the next possession.

A temporary break, as Michigan State opened the half outscoring Michigan 15-4 in the first five minutes. Carr kept going, driving for a dunk and hitting free throws after a hard foul by Lendeborg. Then Fears drew another foul. As he got up off the court, he waved to the crowd before hitting both shots. After a middy made it 46-41, Fears kept motioning to the crowd, clapping, bringing the crowd right into it as his team smelled blood in the water.

McKenney hit a long jumper out of a timeout to cool the game down, but back-to-back makes from Kohler made it 48-45 with 13:11 to play — as close as the game had been since the first four minutes.

Scott’s contributions to the run came defensively, as his length flummoxed Michigan’s guards. It was on that end of the court that he drew a foul on McKenney with 11:30 to play, which was ruled intentional upon review. Those shots activated him offensively, as he drove for an and-one layup on the next possession to make it 52-50 with 10:42 to play. And as Kohler walled up Mara for a stop, causing a backcourt turnover, Michigan State had all the momentum.

Michigan State’s comeback was fueled by defense, as five steals contributed to nine Michigan turnovers. The Spartans scored 17 points off of those through the first 14 minutes of the half.

Kohler hit a 3 with 7:52 remaining to tie the game at 55, a lopsided score wiped to a clean slate. And Michigan State took its first lead on the other side of a timeout as Fears eurostepped his way to the rack, putting home the 57-55 layup for Michigan State’s first lead of the game. Michigan tied it at the foul line, but Scott took it right back on a layup.

Will Tschetter hit a 3-pointer to edge forward, 60-59, getting Michigan some rhythm with its first back-to-back scoring possessions in nearly 10 minutes of play.

Tschetter stole points from Michigan State with a foul on Carr. The Michigan State forward had hit his first four free throws of the game to shake off poor foul shooting this season, but he missed two with less than six minutes to play in a tight game.

Kohler made it a one-point game again at the free-throw line, but Cadeau edged ahead with a layup for Michigan. His 3-pointer at 3:05 made it 69-63 Michigan entering a timeout. After sitting much of the second half, Cadeau made the winning contributions in this stretch to stave off the upset.

Fears got it closer at the foul line with less than three minutes to go, but Michigan stayed ahead off the hand of Lendeborg. On a night its outside shooters went a combined 4 for 21, Michigan State needed a reliable threat outside but didn’t have it. Meanwhile, Michigan had the ball. An offensive rebound by Lendeborg kept the ball with 1:38 to play, ticking down valuable time.

A 6-0 burst drew a 10-point lead for Michigan entering the final minute, but Fears kept the crowd's hope alive with a second-chance 3-pointer (the first second-chance points for Michigan State despite 11 offensive rebounds) with 53.8 seconds to play.

But Michigan State ran out of time, even as Michigan extended the game. After Izzo took a technical foul with 31.5 seconds to play, Lendeborg hit all four free throws. May called a timeout to boos from the remaining crowd, and Izzo looked on furious from the scorer's table.

Michigan built a big its lead by halftime with 12 points from Lendeborg and a pair of 3-pointers each from guards Cadeau and McKenney. Michigan State made just seven of its 26 shot attempts, going cold for a full 6:12 to close the half before Carr beat the buzzer with a dunk.

Before the game, Izzo called this Michigan team one of the most talented, and that was especially prominent in the frontcourt. That’s where the game started out with emphasis. Particularly, 7-foot-3 Michigan center Mara versus 6-foot-11 Michigan State center Carson Cooper.

Mara worked on Cooper in the post for Michigan’s first bucket of the game, and Cooper flushed a lob for Michigan State’s tying effort. The two banged away at each other, two towers in the paint for two rivals trying to establish a physical tone.

Cooper got a little bit of help from his point guard, Fears, who dribbled right at Mara to draw a foul just 25 seconds after tipoff. Later, Fears would draw another Mara foul with 4:50 remaining in the half, brake-checking Mara running upcourt. Fears scored 12 points in the half, half of them at the foul line.

Michigan stretched a 10-2 lead in the first five minutes as Michigan State missed four of its first five shots. But then Kohler hit a 3 in the right corner to cut the lead. That proved a brief reprieve from an offense that struggled to break or shoot. Fears’ hand was the sole source of halfcourt offense it seemed, as teammates shot 4 for 19 (21%) around him. Kohler missed six of his seven shots, including a pair of 3s.

In a battle of Division I’s two best-rated defenses, Michigan’s unit won out. And the Wolverines kept building their lead against a Michigan State rotation jumbled by foul trouble. It took

7:30 for Michigan to build a 10-point lead, 15-5, and that grew to a 13-point difference off a layup by Morez Johnson Jr. at 8:52.

Michigan State needed to settle in, and so it looked to its point guard, Fears, to get things going. He drove into the paint to draw an and-one that made it 20-10 after Johnson’s layup, talking smack to Cadeau as he got up. But even Fears, who has played at a career-high level the past couple of weeks, couldn’t do it all. The next possession, Johnson stripped Fears. Then Fears jacked up an inside-out 3 to follow that airballed.

Down 13 after a fast-break layup from Johnson, Michigan State asserted itself with a 10-2 run that made it 22-17 with 5:53 to play and brought the Breslin Center to its feet. A 3-pointer from Scott and a pair of free throws from backup forward Jesse McCulloch aided the run, as did the hand of Fears.

The Spartans, as ugly as they’d looked offensively in the half, were still in this one. And as Fears baited Mara into his second foul, Michigan State had its moment to erase its earlier struggles.

Instead, the offense stuck itself in the mud, with 6:12 between a Fears jumper and Carr’s dunk to beat the halftime buzzer. Michigan State went two separate stints of two minutes or more without even attempting a shot, though it got to the foul line.

Michigan stayed ahead, up 29-21, when a pair of calls went awry for Michigan State. On back-to-back possessions with just under three minutes to play, Cam Ward turned the ball over on a travel, then earned a hook-and-hold foul after a review from the officials with 2:29 that erased what would’ve been a big stop for the Spartans.

Lendeborg hit the free throws, then converted an and-one on McCulloch. McKenney, born in the heralded Spartan recruiting grounds of Flint, hit his second 3-pointer of the half to go up 37-21. An 8-0 run put Michigan firmly in command at the half.

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