“Now, the rest of the season, we plan on doing it”, safety Montae Nicholson said. But yet again the Terps defense came together to stifle the Spartans offense and force a punt.
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Maryland’s defensive backs: The Terps secondary had its best game of the season against the Spartans.
“(I would rank Connor Cook) at the very top, he followed an outstanding quarterback at MI State – Kirk Cousins”, Raye said. The Spartans also lost a close contest to Notre Dame in Cook’s debut as the No. 1 quarterback. “We needed to bounce back”.
Maryland has not been a good football team this season. MI State’s Aerial Powers was the second-leading scorer with 23.5 points per conference outing a year ago, while the Buckeyes’ Ameryst Alston averaged 19.1 as the fourth-leading scorer in the Big Ten last season.
JD: I expect MSU to play the style of play they have against high powered teams such as the University of MI in Tom Anastos’ tenure and that is to play extremely defensive.
Against Maryland, the Dawgs picked up the slack for the offense which had to replace quarterback Connor Cook for an extended amount of time due to injury for the first time in his three seasons as the starter. The Terps finished with 107 rushing yards on 37 carries (2.9 per attempt), and just 289 overall. “Just to try to get everybody involved and make the right play every time”. “He really helps out our defense, because we can always rely on him making big plays, making those third down conversions”.
“I was about as caught off guard as you guys were, ” O’Connor said. “We work on it each week, but it’s hard when it’s moving fast at the end of a game”, linebacker Riley Bullough said. Everybody has to raise their level of play to get back to where we were accustomed to being. “I probably could have gone”.
Maryland (2-8, 0-6) couldn’t take advantage of Cook’s absence. For precautionary reasons, as it appears he will be ready for the Ohio State game, he was taken out the entire second half in favor of mainly Tyler O’Connor and small portion of Damion Terry. Each deep ball he threw never had a chance, including a just a bad overthrow when he had Aaron Burbridge open downfield that was intercepted. The over/under total for the game has been set at 56.5 points.
Nicholson claimed only a measure of redemption for himself and the defense.
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“He didn’t have the arm strength to be full-go”, Dantonio said. “We’re starting to finally click”. Today, Jeremy Dewar from ToC returned the favor, answering a few of our questions about Sparty as we prepare for their visit to the Heights tomorrow night. On the previous play before the controversial touchdown pass, Spartans senior cornerback Arjen Colquhoun dropped a game-clinching interception in the endzone.
