The Minnesota Golden Gophers three-game winning streak came to a screeching halt on Tuesday night in East Lansing as the Gophers were defeated by the No. 7 Michigan State Spartans 73-51. The defeat drops the Gophers overall record this season to 11-10 including 3-7 in conference play.

After getting off to one of their best starts this season over the weekend against Oregon, the Gophers followed it up with one of their worst starts on the season against the Spartans. To open Tuesday night's game, the Gophers made just one of their first 10 attempts in the opening nine minutes and just two of their first 13 over the first 12 minutes of action.

Michigan State didn't get off to too much of a better start themselves, making just three of their first 13 attempts. But a three minute stretch that saw them make three of four attempts helped the Spartans extend a 11-6 lead over the Gophers to 16-8 quickly.

The Spartans would catch fire to end the second half, scoring 20 points over the final seven minutes of action while the Gophers continued to struggle and found themselves with just 16 points at halftime and facing a 36-16 deficit entering the second half.

The Gophers would score 35 points in the second half and shot 48.3% from the floor but were unable to dig themselves out of the deep hole.

There may not be a better player in the Big Ten this season than Gophers senior forward Dawson Garcia. After winning the Big Ten Player of the Week honors for his pair of performances against Iowa and Oregon, Garcia put together a fourth straight 20+ point performance with 21 points on 9-of-16 shooting against the Spartans.

After scoring eight points on 4-of-9 shooting in the first half, Garcia had 13 points in the final 20 minutes, shooting 5-of-7 from the floor. The star forward also had five rebounds and one assist in the win.

It was a terrible day for Minnesota on the boards as they were outrebounded in the game 40-22 which included allowing 13 offensive rebounds from Michigan State. Those 13 rebounds resulted in 13 second-chance points for the Gophers.

The 40 rebounds by the Spartans is the most the Gophers have allowed in a game this season, the previous high was Michigan who had 39 in a game which included overtime. The 18-rebound differential is also the largest against the Gophers since Purdue outrebounded Minnesota 38-19 on December 4, 2022.

Spartans center Carson Cooper was especially dominant on the boards, recording 11 rebounds in 21 minutes of action.

Asuma didn't start the game for the Gophers on Tuesday but after Lu'Cye Patterson picked up two personal fouls in the opening minutes, Ben Johnson's hand was forced to go to Asuma early. Overall, the Minnesota native played 21 minutes in the loss compared to Patterson's 19. Asuma had eight of the Gophers' 10 total points off the bench, a stark contrast to the 32 points that Michigan State had coming off the bench.

The former three-star prospect was efficient hitting 3-of-6 attempts form the field including 2-of-4 from three-point range. He also had three rebounds and one assist. It was a good performance for Asuma who after posting 15 points against Maryland earlier this month had just eight points across the last three games.

Outside of Asuma, the Gophers bench was 1-for-7 with Frank Mitchell being the only other player off the bench to get on the board.

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