Next Up: The Minnesota Golden Gophers
by LVS on Nov 3, 2010 9:49 PM CDT
in Michigan State Spartans Football
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PrintSo, in this case, the schedule-makers have been fairly kind to MSU; the team gets to rebound from last Saturday's horror show by welcoming one of the worst Big Ten teams in ages to East Lansing. Minnesota has been fire-your-coach-in-the-middle-of-the-season bad. (Not that firing Brewster was a bad idea.) While Gophers focus on their ongoing coaching search--and rightly so--MSU's attention is firmly on the remaining games. The Spartans will be looking to put up an impressive scoreline to help rehabilitate their standing with poll voters, and Minnesota's defense is likely to be accommodating. The gory stats:
|
|
Minnesota (nat'l rank) |
MSU (nat'l rank) |
|
Passing offense |
236.78 (47) |
252.11 (37) |
|
Pass efficiency |
132.96 (52) |
154.43 (21) |
|
Rushing offense |
132.78 (87) |
175.44 (37) |
|
Total offense |
369.56 (66) |
427.56 (30) |
|
Scoring offense |
22.78 (87) |
31.33 (41) |
|
Passing defense |
215.78 (65) |
210.89 (59) |
|
Pass efficiency defense |
165.03 (116) |
114.78 (31) |
|
Rushing defense |
201.78 (107) |
123.78 (31) |
|
Total defense |
417.56 (92) |
334.67 (32) |
|
Scoring defense |
34.11 (105) |
20.0 (29) |
|
Penalty yards |
43.0 (24) |
67.11 (104) |
|
Turnover margin |
+.11 (53) |
+.67 (21) |
So, that Gopher defense: not so good. MSU will no doubt be doing all it can to re-establish a running game which has tapered off significantly in the past three games. In the past four games, Minnesota has allowed 250 rushing yards to Wisconsin, 230 to Purdue, 145 to Penn State, and 263 to Ohio State. MSU may not match OSU's total, but this is a major opportunity to return the rushing game to the 175-200 yard outings that we took for granted earlier in the season. The pass defense ranks 65th in the country in yards allowed, but that stat is enormously deceiving; the pass efficiency defense is 116th in the country (out of 120!). Basically, Gopher opponents are too busy picking up yards in the ground game to throw much -- but when they do throw, they pick up yards with regularity. Cousins, Dell, Cunningham & Co. can no doubt do the same.
The Gopher offense isn't totally awful, but it's not great either. I'm quite certain that the MSU defense will take its job seriously, however, as they all remember (like we do) how Adam Weber racked up 416 yards passing on only 31 attempts last season. Weber is back, of course, and the Gophers have some solid performers on offense. But on the whole, Minnesota is nowhere near the level of the truly good offenses MSU has faced this season.
So, like always, I put it to you: 62ish hours from kickoff, how are you feeling about Saturday's game?
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We should crush these guys.
If we don’t, I’ll suddenly be very worried about the Penn State game (not that I’m not a little nervous as it is, but as I mentioned when someone on OTE brought up our terrible record in Happy Valley, it’s a bit misleading to say we’ve sucked there when we’ve only been really good one year that we played there and Penn State went to the Rose Bowl that year). We ought to be royally ticked off about how we played last week and ready to take it out on somebody – and Minnesota is about as accommodating a “somebody” to take it out on as is possible.
Run game
I think we see a nice return to pound green pound. My hope of a final score is 45-10 in favor the green and white.
by Jdoyle84 on Nov 3, 2010 10:20 PM CDT via mobile reply actions
Do Run Run
We could use a game where we have something like 50 rushing attempts and 250+ rushing yards.
by Ducking Delvon on Nov 4, 2010 9:12 AM CDT up reply actions
I'd love to see us drop three bills' worth of rushing yardage on Minny this week.
Not sure MSU will get the running game rolling quite to that extent, though.
I’m guessing the lead is in the 14-21 points range at halftime, and MSU wins handily although not necessarily in a totally dominant fashion.
Hey! I'm tryin' to eat lunch here!
I'm actually very worried
Everyone thinks we should kill these guys, but the team’s been flat for a couple weeks. There’s no way we should have lost to them last year. I fear a slow start inspires confidence into Goldie.
This game won’t be settled til the third quarter at earliest I’m afraid.
Schadenfreude ist die schoenste Freude
I'm with you....
I shouldn’t be nervous about this game, but I am.
I think it has more to do with wondering about the mental state of our team, because I know we are physically superior and better coached. Maybe I should just quit playing amateur psychologist and relax, huh?
We should...
be able to do what ever we want to this team. They have been run and passed against by what I would consider lesser opponents. The national championship target is off our back and it’s time for redemption. MSU stops the losing skid against Goldie:
MSU 41 UMN 10
Question:
I do have to wonder about what is going on with our team the last 3 weeks. 3 Flat starts with 2 come from behind victories, and well… last week. Our run game has SUCKED compared to our production early this season. The game I look at is Wisconsin. We pounded them. What changed? Are we hurt/tired up front (lack of depth)? If it’s just a matter of teams are stacking the box, then shouldn’t we be killing them for big plays in the air? Does anyone have an opinion on this?
offensive line?
I didn’t realize McDonald went out in the second half against Iowa (we lost the
game on multiple fronts though, not just inability to run). Article in the Detroit News talking about
recruiting a jc offensive lineman mentioned that and that one of the redshirt freshmen (i think Conway) was still troubled by a neck injury so unavailable.
Frankly, our 2 biggest areas of concern were offensive line and kicker – both coming thru the
first 6 games better than we could’ve hoped really. Seems like DJ Young has gotten more penalties these last 3 games too, though mostly going against Adrian Claiborne w Iowa.
It is hard to believe that we just took Wisc by surprise and got lucky for a whole game. Surely the coaches are looking at the same thing – what worked so well against Wisc and lets get it back.
Several articles have mentioned teams stacking the box to stop our run first. One thing we really have noticed this year is that Treadwell seems to be trying different things to get the run game going, not just 30-40 straight up the gut power runs for a loss or 1-2 yard gain when it is not working to run straight up the middle.
by wifeofaspartan on Nov 5, 2010 6:53 AM CDT up reply actions
Last Big Ten blowout we've had:
Indiana in 2007: 52-27
I’d love to see this game be over at half time but sadly, I don’t think that will be the case. I think it’ll be a 10-pt game at halftime and we’ll eventually pull away for a 18-20 pt win. I just don’t feel like we’re gonna destroy Minny (like we should). A win is a win though and coming off the bye week, we should be healthy and ready to win out.
I'm really not worried about getting the W
I’m confident we’ll win comfortably – i.e. by two or more scores – and that a dominant performance/blowout is likely. It would be one thing if we were playing at Minnesota, but without crowd support I really don’t see that team putting up much in the way of resistance.
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