The Gophers men’s basketball team mismanaged its way to only 12 points through 16-plus minutes in Tuesday’s first half at Michigan State.

But the Spartans’ poor shooting allowed Minnesota to be down only nine points. Then Tre Holloman went off.

The Cretin-Derham Hall alum drilled three straight 3-pointers as part of a 13-0 run, and the seventh-ranked Spartans cruised to a 73-51 win at the Breslin Center in East Lansing, Mich.

Michigan State (18-2, 9-0 Big Ten) has won 13 straight, while Minnesota (11-10, 3-7) saw its three-game winning streak snapped, a spurt that included two wins over ranked teams.

“The one thing I told our guys: the more you win, the more you get attention of opponents, and our response was going to be so key,” head coach Ben Johnson said on the KFXN-FM postgame show. “We knew they were going to be turned up for this game. They knew we were the second hottest team in the league. I just felt like our response was more on our heels than it was to be the aggressor from the first play of the game.”

The Gophers turned the ball over on the first possession, and their passivity and indecisiveness were most glaring with three shot-clock violations in the first half.The Spartans were a 14-point favorite and opened up a 36-16 lead at the half on the back of Holloman, a junior who finished with a team-high 12 points.

Dawson Garcia’s second half effort briefly got Minnesota back in the game; as his trey got the U deficit down to 12 with eight minutes left. The reigning Big Ten player of the week had eight points in the first half and ended with a game-high 21 points. He has had six straight games with 20 or more points.

The Gophers’ turnovers were a death knell in both losses to Michigan State this season.

In the 90-72 defeat at Williams Arena on Dec. 4, Minnesota had 14 turnovers to Michigan State’s seven, and the Spartans had a whopping 27-2 discrepancy in fast-break points in the blowout at the Barn.

“That’s the entire game,” Johnson recalled Monday.

The Gophers had 11 turnovers in the first half Tuesday, and the Spartans took advantage with a 11-0 lead in fast-break points. Minnesota had only one turnover in the second half, but the Spartans were still able to get out and run with a 17-3 advantage in transition points.

Gophers starting point guard Lu’Cye Patterson picked up two fouls within the opening 27 seconds of the game, and he sat out for the next 12 minutes. He, Femi Odukale and Parker Fox each failed to score in the first 20 minutes. The damage was done.

It was Michigan State’s 27th win over Minnesota, the most against any opponent, since the Breslin Center opened in 1989, according to the Peacock broadcast.

Minnesota now begins the second half of the conference schedule against last-place Washington (10-10, 1-8) at home Saturday.

“You go through this tough stretch: it’s going to do two things,” Johnson said on the radio. “It’s going to make you tougher, or it’s going to break you. I think our guys have learned how to gain strength from it, and we got to use that the next 10 games.”