Onions! Onions! Onions!
In what was a dogfight from the opening tip to the very end, Tre Holloman won it with the last punch for No. 8 Michigan State on the road Wednesday against No. 15 Maryland with a March Madness-esque half-court buzzer beater shot.
The 58-55 win for Michigan State at the Xfinity Center in College Park, Maryland was its third road win in its last four games and kept its rising seeding to a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament intact.
Michigan State’s Jaxon Kohler was given the assist on Holloman’s shot, as the 6-foot-9 forward found his teammate moving up the court after grabbing the defensive rebound of the missed 3-point attempt from Maryland’s Ja’Kobi Gillespie.
Watch: Tre Holloman hits half-court buzzer-beater to win it for Michigan State
Here’s a view of what Holloman’s shot looked like in person at the Xfinity Center:
In a postgame interview on the court with the Big Ten Network’s Andy Katz, Holloman mentioned that it was his first game-winner since high school at Cretin-Derham Hall in Minneapolis.
‘I seen the rim and then the shot clock going down,’ Holloman told Katz about his shot. ‘So I had to throw it up, man. We had practiced those man so I just got up and it went in.’
His coach, Tom Izzo, credited Holloman for flushing his turnover from a few seconds earlier to be able to be in the right mindset to make the game-winning play.
‘Trey made the big turnover and he made the lucky shot, but we deserved to win,’ Izzo told Katz after the game. ‘I’m not taking that as a lucky shot.’
With the win, Michigan State picked up its fourth consecutive Quad 1 win while improving its overall Quad 1 record to 9-4. Holloman’s heroics in College Park on Wednesday also gave his team its third consecutive win against a ranked opponent, a first for Michigan State since 2020, per the Big Ten Network broadcast.
Michigan State will now look to catch its breath before preparing for No. 13 Wisconsin (22-6, 12-5 in Big Ten) on Sunday at 1:30 p.m. ET at the Breslin Center in East Lansing, Michigan.
The USA TODAY app gets you to the heart of the news — fast. Download for award-winning coverage, crosswords, audio storytelling, the eNewspaper and more.
