No treats for MSU

Spartans a step behind in tragic 42-34 defeat

Minneapolis – On a night full of tricks, treats and frights, nothing was scarier than what happened to the MSU football team inside TCF Bank Stadium on Saturday night.

Matt Bishop

At 4-4 on the season, the Spartans needed to come and put the stamp on a struggling Minnesota team in order to improve their bowl positioning. Instead, what happened was a debacle of the highest order — a stunning 42-34 defeat that forces MSU to win its final three games in order to finish with a winning record.

This game was an epic fail, a fiasco, a catastrophe — whatever you want to call it. The Spartans gave up 42 points to a team that scored as many in its last three games combined. A team that was 112th in the country in offense. A team without its best player. A team that had more penalty yardage than MSU had rushing. A team with every reason to quit.

Instead, what happened was as futile a game that has been seen this season. If this wasn’t a football game and instead a “which team can shoot itself in the foot last” game, MSU wins that one, thanks to senior Kendell Davis-Clark running into the punter on fourth-and-one with less than 2:30 to go, drawing a five-yard penalty and a game-ending first down for Minnesota.

The list of oddities in this game knows no bounds. There were inconsistent officiating and inconsistent booth reviews, there were receivers open all over the field, there was sophomore quarterback Kirk Cousins’ dipsy-doo touchdown pass, and there was Minnesota’s school-record 17 penalties.

But the oddest thing of all was Mark Dantonio not having his team ready to play for probably the first time since he’s been MSU’s head coach.

Although this will go down as another one of the famous losses by eight points or fewer, the fact MSU was down 14-0 before it even took an offensive snap tells the story. Minnesota scored on a 62-yard bomb on the first play from scrimmage. Then, freshman running back Edwin Baker fumbled the ensuing kickoff and the Golden Gophers scored on a 37-yard pass on third-and-long.

There’s no questioning the effort, heart and determination of the Spartans on this night. That was there. A lesser team would’ve been blown out of the stadium. But MSU battled back and even held the lead heading into the fourth quarter.

But something was missing. The intensity with which we saw MSU play against Michigan and Iowa was, like MSU’s defenders on a variety of Minnesota deep passes, a step behind.

Sophomore receiver B.J. Cunningham said he didn’t feel like the team came out ready to play. Cousins said, “It’s frustrating when you prepare and you feel like you are ready to go and it doesn’t happen.” Junior linebacker Eric Gordon said the team needs to find a way to get the emotion back from the get-go.

“All it comes down to is emotion and doing your job and we didn’t do that tonight,” Gordon said.

So the big question is: Where did the emotion go?

That’s what Dantonio and his staff will have to find out this week as the team prepares to play Western Michigan on Saturday. It’s been a streaky season for MSU — three losses, four wins, two losses. To be in a comfortable position for the program’s third straight bowl game, the team will have to be streaky one more time: three wins.

Although a New Year’s Day bowl is now out of the question, this team still has a lot to play for.

Three wins would mean the program’s third straight bowl game for the first time since 1995-97. Three wins would mean a month of bowl practices, which especially are important for the young players who want to get better and improve for the future.

The season isn’t over — that’s the key — but if the Spartans play another game like they did Saturday, they’ll be home for the holidays.

Matt Bishop is a State News football reporter. He can be reached at bishop20@msu.edu.