“I steered the motivation from her to come out here and ball”. He rushed for 100 yards and two touchdowns, and No. 12 Michigan State held on for a 36-28 victory over No. 18 Notre Dame on Saturday night.
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The damage started on Michigan State’s second drive of the quarter, as senior Spartan quarterback Tyler O’Conner engineered a methodical 10-play, 75-yard drive, capped by junior tailback Gerald Holmes’ 3-yard touchdown run to make it 22-7. It also will be an interesting matchup of two outstanding position coaches: Michigan State defensive line coach Ron Burton and Notre Dame offensive line mentor Harry Hiestand.
“We’re going to work to get this group better each and every week”, he said.
“So, big win. We take it from here and start to develop an identity”.
OFFENSE: DeShone Kizer, 20-37, 344 yards, two touchdowns, one rushing touchdown. Later on in the quarter Dantonio continued his gameplan of controlling the time of possession as the Spartans went 75 yards in 10 plays, bleeding 4:35 off the clock and once again finding the endzone.
Sunday morning, it was pointed out that Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly had “liked” a tweet suggesting he fire defensive coordinator Brian VanGorder following the team’s loss to Michigan State.
The Irish enter this game as 7.5-point favorites against the Spartans according to Odds Shark, but most of the predictions out there have this one as a much tighter game.
“We got them into a good third-down situation, and we don’t do a very good job on two vertical (routes) and give them an easy completion”, Kelly said. “We gotta clean up everything”. As a team, Michigan State chugged for 260 rushing yards, three touchdowns and five yards per rush, filleting Notre Dame’s delicate defense until there was virtually nothing left. That’s not the way you want to give up points in a game.
Notre Dame: WR Equanimeous St.
That’s when the defense caved in, allowing scoring drives of 75, 39 and 78 yards in the third quarter alone.
At that point, Kizer had thrown for a career-high 336 yards as the Irish played catch-up.
On the other side of the ball, Michigan State showed why the Spartans could fail to win their second straight Big Ten title.
Since then, Notre Dame had been searching for a signature victory like that one.
“That wave starts to roll on you, just like it started to roll on them in the third quarter, and it’s tough to stop, stop ’em”, Dantonio said. “We’ve got kids that fight and have resolve”. “We had to be able to run the football, we were able to do that, (and) come up with some explosive plays”. Kizer took the snap out of the shotgun formation and cut toward the left pylon.
No. 18 Notre Dame and No. 12 Michigan State will lock up Saturday in what is likely to be a competitive battle between the two ranked teams.
With the win, the apparently under-rated Spartans (2-0) not only left Notre Dame (1-2) with its season on the brink.
The Michigan State Spartans (1-0) defeated the Furman Paladins, 28-13, last week.
The Spartans closed out the half with a methodical 11-play, 92-yard drive that ended with a 10-yard sweep from O’Connor to receiver R.J. Shelton to increase their lead to 15-7 at halftime.
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Notre Dame won the toss and chose to receive first as sophomore C.J. Sanders returned it all the way for what looked like a touchdown.
