They rode a seemingly unstoppable shooting performance and held the red-handled knife in the Spartans’ hearts all the way to a 67-49 victory.

“For the most part,” MSU head coach Tom Izzo said, “that was an old-fashioned whooping.”

It was the annual rehashing of a rivalry that has been a road hex for the Spartans for nearly a decade. No. 5 MSU (19-4 overall, 9-1 Big Ten) still has not won in Madison since 2001, while the Badgers are now 133-10 (.930) at home since Wisconsin head coach Bo Ryan took over.

To make matters incalculably worse, junior guard Kalin Lucas, the Spartans’ co-captain and leading scorer, went down with a sprained right ankle at about the 10:40 mark of the second half. He did not return and Izzo said his status was uncertain.

“It’s not good, that’s for sure and we’ll just probably have to evaluate it when we get home,” Izzo said. “I have no idea.”

Junior guard Durrell Summers was the only Spartan to score in double figures (11 points) while senior forward Raymar Morgan had eight points and 10 rebounds.

Perhaps it’s the rims or a creak in the floor, but it appeared all the mojo — every bounce of the ball and each roll around the rim — seemed to favor the charged-up No. 16 Badgers (17-5, 7-3) as they held MSU to a season-low 49 points.

“I would say, defensively, tracking down loose balls, we played pretty well,” Ryan said. “In order to beat a team like that, you have to play well.“

But more important to the here and now, the Spartans have been knocked back to mortality without their leader and their lead in the conference has dwindled by a game.

“I think we all did (see it coming),” sophomore guard Korie Lucious said. “In practice, we just haven’t been bringing it like we should have. We haven’t had the energy like we should have. Coach has been telling us that for the last couple days about practice so I think that was probably the main reason we just lost the game tonight.”

The teams’ contrasting styles were evident from the get-go. Wisconsin was intent on draining the shot clock to single digits before finding a perimeter shot to their liking, while the Spartans focused on getting the ball into the paint quickly.

In the first eight minutes, five of Wisconsin’s seven baskets were 3-pointers, one was a deep two-pointer and the last was a fade-away jumper. The raucous home crowd liked it just fine, as the Badgers streaked to a 13-4 lead.

With both teams’ point guards and leading scorers — Lucas and Wisconsin senior Trevon Hughes, each averaging 16 points per game — on the bench with foul trouble early, MSU’s deficit grew to as much as 18.

“When we made a little comeback we had a couple critical (turnovers),” Izzo said. “When we cut it to nine, two of the next three (possessions) were turnovers.”

The Spartans did more than save face early in the second half, cutting the Badgers’ lead to single digits by the 14-minute mark. But with Lucas in the locker room, the Wisconsin wave rolled.

With Lucas’ status uncertain, MSU might be without their leader for the toughest stretch of the season — for ESPN’s College Gameday against the Fighting Illini in Champaign, Ill., on Saturday and Purdue at home on Tuesday.

“I told a lot of people we’re not going to go undefeated and we have to find out how to bounce back,” Izzo said, “because the road doesn’t get any easier.”