Swenson bails Spartans out with last-minute kick

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For about two minutes Saturday afternoon in Spartan Stadium, all eyes were on junior kicker Brett Swenson.

There were the eyes of the MSU student section, with their hands in the air, hoping to violently throw them down if Swenson could split the uprights from 44 yards out to give MSU the go-ahead three points with less than 10 seconds left in the game.

There were the eyes of his confident teammates — senior defensive end Dwayne Holmes, who prayed and invoked the Father, Son and Holy Spirit of football for a successful kick, and junior center Joel Nitchman, who scanned the electric crowd buzzing with nervous excitement, and junior defensive end Trevor Anderson, who thought to himself, “If he doesn’t make this kick, I’m going to choke him.”

There were the eyes of both head coaches — MSU’s Mark Dantonio, the calm, cool and collected sideline rover who gave Swenson a small smile and words of encouragement, and Wisconsin’s Bret Bielema, who called two timeouts to ice the Spartans kicker still hot from a career-long 50-yard boot earlier in the fourth quarter.

With both timeouts in the past and 11 beefy Badgers lined up to block the kick of the smallest player on the field, snapper Alex Shackleton flung the ball back to holder Aaron Bates, who planted the pigskin in the ground.

The Florida native took two steps, thrust his right foot behind him and swung it forward, powering through the football. Up it went, over the outstretched arms of Wisconsin defenders. All those eyes on Swenson moved to the football, which hurdled through the air.

All eyes except Swenson’s. By the time the football was halfway to the field goal posts, he turned his back to the kick and dashed to the sidelines with his arms thrown into the sky. He knew the kick was good. He didn’t need to watch.

“That was one of my best kicks in a long time,” said Swenson, who set an MSU record earlier this season with 15 straight made kicks but missed all three attempts last week at Michigan.

“I guess I never saw it go through, but it felt good.”

Once the Spartans staved off a multilateral kick return by the Badgers, Swenson was carried to the southeast corner of the stadium, where the MSU marching band and students exalted in the 25-24 comeback victory.

“He’s got ice in his veins,” said Nitchman, who carried Swenson on his shoulders to the adoring MSU fans. “We all knew he was going to make it, so it was great.”

One-minute offense

In his career, Brian Hoyer hadn’t been often asked to lead a game-winning, hurry-up fourth quarter drive.

But the senior channeled football’s great comeback quarterbacks to engineer a 56-yard drive down to the Wisconsin 27-yard line in about one minute Saturday.

With two first down passes of 20 and 32 yards to emerging junior No. 1 receiver Blair White and a 4-yard pass to redshirt freshman B.J. Cunningham, Hoyer moved the ball within field goal range for Swenson, who told the quarterback he needed the ball inside the Wisconsin 30-yard line.

“To take the team down and give them the opportunity to win, that’s my job and that’s what I expect of myself,” said Hoyer, who shook off two dropped passes on the drive.

“In camp and in spring ball we used to end every practice with a two-minute drill. I guess the hard work paid off.”

Reversing a trend

With Saturday’s nail-biting come-from-behind win, the Spartans are continuing to change a tradition of dropping close games.

MSU lost every game last season by no more than a touchdown, but with a three-point win over Iowa four weeks ago and Saturday’s squeaker in the books, MSU feels it has moved past recent collapses.

“I think we’ve learned that we can compete and that the margin of error, as you saw today, is very, very small,” Dantonio said. “We got it done coming down the stretch. I’m not really sure how until we see it (on film).”

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