Saturday, March 30, 2024

Spartans seek to end road game struggles

October 26, 2001

After playing organized football for years, MSU’s Josh Shaw thought he had seen it all.

Then he traveled to Wisconsin’s Camp Randall Stadium, where the Spartans haven’t won since 1991.

“It’s a pretty crazy place,” said Shaw, reflecting on MSU’s last visit two years ago. “The thing I remember most about that place is when they played ‘Jump Around’ and the whole stadium was jumping - even the old people.”

With six regular season games remaining, MSU will try to take a leap of its own Saturday at 11:10 p.m. EDT. The game will be shown on ESPN.

MSU is 0-6 in conference road games over the past two years - as long as Bobby Williams has been head coach. The last win came Sept. 25, 1999, in a 27-10 victory at Illinois.

At 3-2 overall, the Spartans have the same record they did a year ago, before they lost four of their last six games.

And that doesn’t sit well with senior wide receiver Herb Haygood, who expects a comeback of sorts against the Badgers.

He said he doesn’t want to see his team collapse like last year.

“I think this will be our best game this year,” Haygood said. “I know they’re going to play a lot of man coverage on defense, and they’re going to put a lot of people in the box to stop our running game. Hopefully we can just put it all together and come up with a complete game.”

Haygood said he vividly remembers the painful memories of MSU’s 40-10 loss in Madison two years ago.

“The last time we were up there we helped Ron Dayne win the Heisman Trophy,” said Haygood, referring to the former running back’s 214 yards rushing and two touchdowns. “We can’t let something like that happen again. He ran all over us.”

After giving up a season-high 214 yards rushing to Minnesota on Oct. 20, the Spartans hope that Saturday’s game won’t turn into yet another track meet.

The defense struggled to make plays against Gopher running backs Tellis Redmon and Marion Barber, who repeatedly found success on wide outside runs.

But after a solid week of practice, focusing on finishing plays with solid tackles and technique, Shaw said he and his teammates are ready for the challenge.

“I think we can stop it,” Shaw said. “It’s nothing that we haven’t seen before. They run stretch plays too. They mostly like to get in between the tackles and pound you. But I think we’ll see more of those stretch plays until we find a way to stop it.”

The Badgers rank fifth in the league in rushing offense and have the league’s rushing leader in Anthony Davis, who has 922 yards on 167 attempts in seven games.

MSU’s running game, on the other hand, has struggled.

Junior fullback Dawan Moss is expected to receive more carries Saturday to help relieve junior tailback T.J. Duckett, who has only rushed for 100 yards or more in two games this season.

“I’ve been told that I’ll get more opportunities and I like that,” Moss said. “But T.J. is doing OK, too. It’s just a matter of time before he gets the chance to have a breakthrough game. We just have to keep at it and keep going hard at the defense.”

Since opponents have been more focused on stopping the run than the past this year, sophomore receiver Charles Rogers said it will be important for the group to block harder - creating more holes for Moss and Duckett.

“As receivers, I think teams probably don’t respect us as much since they have been concentrating more on stopping guys like T.J.,” Rogers said. “We need to help out the backfield and give them more chances to get yards. And I really think this could be the game that turns things around.”

Eric Lacy can be reached at lacyeric@msu.edu.

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