But that’s what Michigan State did.
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EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) – Connor Cook began waving his arms, motioning for the crowd to yell louder.
After a Penn State fumble on the ensuing kickoff gave the Spartans the ball at the 9, Cook took the field and started motioning for the crowd to get louder.
“I was trying to have fun with it. It’s our last time in Spartan Stadium”, the senior quarterback said. “From the bottom of my heart, I told my players that might have the best one I’ve ever seen”.
Michigan State has played with fire all season, pulling off close wins against Oregon, Purdue and Rutgers, winning on an miracle play against Michigan and beating Ohio State on a last-second field goal.
The Buckeyes also probably would have controlled their own destiny for making the College Football Playoff.
Thanks to that miracle 27-23 win by the Spartans, Michigan State locked up a trip to the Big Ten Championship with its 55-16 win over Penn State on Saturday. Penn State (7-5, 4-4), with its rich history, might soon make the division four deep as recruiting improves with the NCAA sanctions in the rear-view mirror.
And two plays after that, J.T. Barrett ran 7 yards for a touchdown and a 7-0 lead.
Cook said he worked his way back little by little during the week of practice leading up to the game, throwing some on Tuesday and throwing a little bit more on Wednesday. “That was a reality check”. Mike Tressel, one of Michigan State’s defensive coordinators, said he approached senior Shilique Calhoun, a team captain, and asked him if he was OK that night.
“It’s hard to take a whole lot of positives out of that”. He handed off to Allen and the Nittany Lions couldn’t stop the 296-pound lineman as he rumbled to the end zone.
Allen said that call was in the playbook for “about five minutes”. Rudock made a 5-yard scoring pass to Jehu Chesson to cut Ohio State’s lead to 14-10 just before halftime. “They got it done”.
Harbaugh, a former MI quarterback who tormented Ohio State in the 1980s, was attempting to continue an odd trend.
As a team, Ohio State ran for 369 yards.
But in the second half, the Nittany Lions played terribly, perhaps their worst half of the two-year James Franklin era, and the Spartans showed why they deserved to go to the Big Ten championship game.
Despite the halftime 20-10 deficit it was far from a poor half of football for Penn State. Cook threw touchdown passes of 29 yards to Aaron Burbridge and 6 yards to Josiah Price to make it 34-10. He bounced off one defender and spun past another before diving into the end zone. MI got outclassed by Ohio State on Saturday, but we might look back on this MI team someday as the least talented group of Harbaugh’s tenure. The Tar Heels (11-1, No. 14 CFP) haven’t gotten much love from the committee without marquee victories on their resume and two FCS wins. The future is incredibly bright for Barkley, especially if Penn State gets offensive line improvement. The Buckeyes’ attack closely matched the 2013 game against MI, when Braxton Miller and Carlos Hyde combined for 46 carries, 393 yards and four TDs.
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But the Spartans first-drive score to start the third quarter foreshadowed how this game would end.
