Second Half Separation Sends Penn St. into Another Blowout of the Spartans

At the start of the 2nd half today, the Spartans kicked off tied with Penn St. 7-7. A blowout seemed anything but imminent. Yet, the next 30 minutes would

At the start of the 2nd half today, the Spartans kicked off tied with Penn St. 7-7. A blowout seemed anything but imminent. Yet, the next 30 minutes would serve as a harsh reality check for a Spartan Football program still pouring the foundation to soon compete consistently with the likes of Penn St. The better team won big today, displaying both the depth and consistency of a top flight national football powerhouse, and the razor thin margin of error the Spartans could afford to stay competitive with Penn St. for the whole game.

 

Coach Dantonio summed up the Spartans 2nd half effort on his post game radio show by saying simply, “you can’t give up big plays and you can’t turn the ball over…those combinations don’t work.” Though the final score read 42-7, the Spartans played the Lions quite even for the 1st half. Part of that was MSU capitalizing on its opportunities, staying fresh on Defense, and executing a stellar “two-minute” offense late in the half. Part of it was also a couple misfires on the Penn St. side of the ball, and a relatively conservative attack early on. But just a handful of plays into the 2nd half, the gap between the two teams began to burst open, and the bleeding didn’t stop until the end.

MSU came out to start the 2nd half, with a now 10-win Penn St. team, focused in part on earning back some national respect, and finishing the season off with their best half. Unfortunately, this effort collapsed from the initial kickoff. Whether the kick was sent the wrong direction, or the rushers failed to stay in their lanes, MSU didn’t play the kick well, and Penn St. started comfortably at their own 45. A couple plays after that, Sr. DE Trevor Anderson committed a foolish and expensive Personal Foul, hitting PSU Sr. QB Daryl Clark way late, and setting up Penn St. with way too short a field. The veteran led Lions took no time to capitalize off the Spartans’ 60 yard combination gift, between the penalty and the kick off, to quickly go up 14-7 on the day. The Lions didn’t let up from there. By the end of the 3rd quarter, the game was out of reach, and MSU was in the middle of a second straight blow out the hands of Penn St.

Whether the Spartans’ 2nd half focus was bad from the start, or whether the self-destructive start sent them into a rapid tail spin, MSU picked a really bad time to play a bad quarter. Perhaps the Spartans were too jacked up for the 2nd half, pleased to find themselves tied after the 1st, and sensing an opportunity to place an exclamation point on the up and down season. But more likely the case, the experienced and poised Nittany Lions began to really play well, and tactfully exploit the Spartans’ inexperience and weaknesses.

As the 2nd half wore on, MSU’s Offense couldn’t control the ball long enough to give the Spartans’ a chance to score, let alone give the Defense enough time off the field to rest. As time wore on, the Nittany Lions Defensive Line began to dominate more and more, pushing Rs.-So. QB Kirk Cousins to try and force balls into gaps that simply weren’t there. What was there, two times on the night, was a well coached and fundamentally sound white jersey to complete the Penn St. interception. Today Cousins went through yet another “young QB learning experience,” and will likely emerge much better for it in 2010, and beyond.

PSU Jr. RB Evan Royster showed throughout the day why he’s probably the best all around back in the Big Ten, beating the Spartans often to the corner, and shaking off would-be-tacklers to rack up a cool 114 yards on the day. Royster began to lean on the tiring Defense as the 3rd quarter ticked away, finding more opportunities to break into the Defense’s second level and record big gains.

Penn St. finished the day with an impressive 512 yards on Offense, 324 of them coming through the nearly-mild late November air. Needless to say, that’s the last 300+ yard passing performance Mark Dantonio would ever like to see against the Spartans at home in November. It’s awful tough to win giving up those kind of yards, even tougher when you’re playing the likes of Penn St. Though it’s obvious, it must be said that MSU has to find a way to create turnovers in big games like these, and cannot afford to allow an Offense to shred them for so many yards by air if they want to have any real chance of winning big games in coming Novembers.

Penn St. has a pretty fine football team here in 2009. They’re not the best in the Big 10, but they’re definitely in the top three and probably a top 15 team nationally. I don’t think the Spartans have much to hang their heads about after today’s effort; they got beat by a much better team. Yet, the result doesn’t completely tell the story of the game. It got away from MSU awful quick in the 3rd, but credit Penn St. for raising the level of their game significantly from their first half effort. And remember what happened in 2007, when Penn St. collapsed on itself in the 2nd half to lose the Land Grant Game. Today, they finished the job, looking as dominant and imposing as any team the Spartans have faced all year.

The Sun Will Rise Again Soon on Spartan Football

MSU Football is a lot better now than it was three years ago when Mark Dantonio arrived, and it will be a lot better yet three years from now. The Spartan Nation might look back at 2009 as a bit of a down year, relative to expectations. But if we’re to be honest, 2008 was a bit of an up year, where a lot of breaks went the Spartans way, health was on their side, and they made the most of their opportunities and luck. These things tend to balance themselves out over time. While this team might have come up with a couple losses more than they maybe should’ve had, they are clearly not yet able to compete for a Big Ten Championship. I felt going into the season this team would win between seven and nine regular season games. In the end they won six, and probably had one or two completely taken away from them. In future years, as depth spreads further throughout the program and the talent level continues to approach a championship level, the Spartans will be in, and win more football games, on a consistent basis.

The foundation of MSU Football is a solid three years into the reconstruction project. Things are coming along pretty well at this point. The depth and talent in the program is far superior to where it was when Dantonio arrived. The discipline and demeanor of the program is tougher and more consistently competitive than they were in the dark ages of 2000-2006. And all signs point to things getting much better for MSU from here.

Rather than trying for a quick fix or short lived gimmick, Mark Dantonio has taken to building back MSU Football from the bottom up. Sometimes that means a step or two backwards before seeing real progress (see Michigan Football, 2008-????), but for MSU, it’s honestly meant a consistent improvement. Sure, one could argue things couldn’t have gotten worse than where they were when Dantonio arrived. But did many really expect MSU to go bowling three years straight? And if all goes well for MSU in the coming Bowl Game (they’re due after the last two years), MSU can ink its third straight winning season for the first time since reality of color TV! That, Spartan Nation, is a foundation becoming solidified, nearing its final stages of its construction.

Don’t get ahead of yourselves now, just because a foundation is getting closer to completion does not mean you start instantly expecting Championships and demanding BCS efforts. Once the foundation is poured, a program can expect to compete for BCS trips and Big 10 Championships. In as soon as a year or two, MSU will be competitive with Penn St. in the Land Grant Game, and there’s a decent chance that one of them will again determine a Big 10 Champion. That is the arc this program is taking. The momentum is there, the progress is there, and if you saw the Spartans play in 2009, the growing pains are definitely there.

Fear not though, Spartan Nation, the sun is on its way back up in East Lansing. If things are always darkest before the dawn, the Dantonio era is off to a pretty good start. The program is stronger across the board now than it’s been since 1999 when, “you know who,” left for LSU. So assuming the “worst” of the Dantonio era has already passed us by, was it really that bad? No. In fact, it’s been a marked improvement over the very best of the program’s “dark ages.”

The Spartan Nation should be humbled by this ongoing and extensive reconstruction process, pleased the overall pace of progress, and truly excited about the next decade or so of Spartan Football. So hang in there...Spartan Nation...our time to shine again, is coming around soon.