Wrap Up: MSU vs. Wisconsin

I feel like MSU is becoming the Big Ten's feel-good story.  Most importantly, here's the latest on Mark Dantonio's health:

- Dantonio had been at home all week and was planning to be in the press box for this game
- Thursday afternoon, he was re-admitted to the hospital because of a small blood clot in his leg.  It's fairly common for this to happen and the action was purely precautionary.
- As stated many times by the athletics family, there is NO set time table for return
- That being said, Coach Treadwell said a few weeks ago that "it would take more than one rope" to keep Coach D away from the Michigan game.

Another musing: Dantonio was watching the game on TV.  There were a couple times when the staff was actually talking to him on the phone about some crucial decisions.  On the first 4th and goal from the 1, here's the announcers' dialog:

"Okay so what do you do here?"
"Tough call, you're only up by 3 and you'd like to have 7"
"7 would make it a 10 point lead...so what do you do??"

"I think they should text Mark Dantonio"
"Ok, so Coach Treadwell calls time out to allow an extra 30 seconds for that text message to go through..."

Anyways! back to football.  The one, clear-cut, absolute point that should be taken away from this game: The MSU Defense can and will step up when needed.  They were simply incredible against a Wisconsin team that boasts among the best in the Big Ten at the QB, RB, TE, and OL spots.  Game ball on defense has to go to DB Chris L Rucker, who had his man on lock down the entire game.  He tackled well, had a few deflections and helped make Wisconsin's passing game look medicore.   It should be noted that Wisconsin's offensive line is gargantuan - the average weight is 323 pounds.  Even against that, the DL and LB's of MSU did a great job of containing RB John Clay and limiting QB Scott Tolzien to only 11/25 passing for only 127 yards.

As for the offense, it was a different kind of game than we have seen up to this point.  Although the MSU backfield of Baker, Bell, and Caper (I believe the name "The BBC" is catching on) tallied 184 yards on the ground, the biggest influence of the game came in the air.  Kirk Cousins completed 20/29 of his passes for 269 yards and 3 TD's.  However, he also threw 2 bad interceptions - the first was a poor decision and read by Cousins, the second was actually tipped at the line of scrimmage.  After the fumble by WR Keith Nichol, it's hard to believe that the Spartans won this game by 10 after committing 3 turnovers in the first half alone.

All in all, this is fantastic news for the Spartans.  Going into the season, there were 4 "benchmark" games on the MSU schedule: vs. Wisconsin, @ Michigan, @ Iowa, and @Penn State.  One is in the books.  The game at Iowa will be tough, as always, but the matchup against Penn State looks a little more winnable this year - Penn State has failed to impress in any game this year.  As for the Michigan game, it'll pit #17 against #18 at 3:30pm on ABC next Saturday.

Smash Right Through that Line of Blue!!!