MSU-Western Afterglow Thread

by KJ@theonlycolors on Nov 7, 2009 2:39 PM CST in Football Comment 5 comments

From zero to four touchdowns in 60 minutes.

Well, that's how you do that. Michigan State jumped out to a 35-0 lead at halftime, took the foot off the gas a bit in the third quarter, but came back to finish the game with a 5-TD lead, 49-14.

Ashton Leggett is your breakout star with 110 rushing yards and 4, count them: 4, touchdowns. (Kudos to Rick, BTW.) Kirk Cousins put up a nearly flawless stat line: 22-25, 353 yards, 2 TDs. Keith Nichol didn't do much with his playing time: 6-10, 30 yards, 1 TD.

The defense held Western to 211 yards, 80 of which came on one play.

Elsewhere, losses by Michigan and Minnesota would seem to help our bowl positioning (to a lesser extent, the Northwestern win hurts). We're now tied for sixth in the league in overall wins and tied for 5th in conference wins. I, for one, wouldn't mind playing up in a bowl game this year. We know we have the ability to compete with higher-ranked opponents. And a solid bowl match-up would provide some renewed meaning to this otherwise racked-with-regret season.

Full game recap later today or tomorrow. Until then, here's the place to discuss all of today's big-time football action.

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Cousins

The opponent doesn’t matter — those statistics are absolutely unreal.

"Do not cheat your team or your teammates. Know your plays. Block. Protect. Add to what we are trying to do."
The Only Colors

by LVS on Nov 7, 2009 2:58 PM CST reply actions 0 recs

Bonus Schadenfreude

Michigan loses to Purdue and Notre Dame loses to Navy.

Light a man a fire, he'll stay warm for a day.
Light a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

by Seer on Nov 7, 2009 5:14 PM CST reply actions 0 recs

The Trifecta...

Great football saturday.

by MooTheKow on Nov 7, 2009 5:37 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

Two questions

1) I couldn’t see the game; were we as good as the box score looks?
2) Is Western just that awful, and if not, where was this the rest of the season?

by SpartanDan on Nov 7, 2009 10:45 PM CST reply actions 0 recs

Great game, still some concerns

Aside from Leggett’s first and last touchdowns (and some garbage time runs by Baker and Jimmerson) the running game wasn’t effective. The good news is it didn’t have to be as Cousins was phenomenal, perhaps the best performance by any QB I’ve watched this year. It wasn’t just his accuracy either – he always seemed to make the right read. By the way, Cousins-to-Linthicum seems like it might be emerging as a potent combination. Also, Keshawn Martin’s role seems to continue to expand.

If the defense can manufacture pressure through any means, they are like a completely different squad. Hiller didn’t seem to be on and in combination with the pressure that was enough to shut him down, except for one drive at the end of the third quarter. BUT, Western doesn’t seem to be that good a team, perhaps the weakest we’ve played since Montana State, so it’s hard to tell. Regardless, this game was a welcome relief.

by Con-T on Nov 8, 2009 8:06 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs