Freshman running back Le’Veon Bell finds himself in the center of a pile of Northwestern defenders. The Spartans had a slow start against the Wildcats, but turned the game around in the second half to achieve a 35-27 victory.
As the No. 5 MSU football team prepares to take on No. 18 Iowa in arguably the most important game left on the schedule, the Spartans find themselves in an unfamiliar position.
Accustomed to being the hunter looking to knock a higher ranked team off its pedestal, MSU will be the hunted Saturday when it travels to Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City, Iowa, to take on the Hawkeyes.
“The bigger the target on your back, people are going to get up for you,” head coach Mark Dantonio said Tuesday at his weekly press conference. “So we expect that every week.”
The targets on the Spartans’ backs are bigger than they’ve been in a long time. MSU sits alone at the top of the Big Ten standings as the only undefeated team in the conference.
On Saturday, the roles will be reversed from last season, when then-No. 7 and undefeated Iowa came into East Lansing to take on a 4-3 MSU team.
“We felt that on the other end, certainly when Iowa came in here last year,” Dantonio said. “We tried to play up, and I think we did. So I’m sure everybody is going to do the same against us.”
With the Spartans sitting at 8-0, Dantonio said he doesn’t want his players to feel pressure as opponents give them their best shot every week. Instead, Dantonio said he hopes his team enjoys this experience after the struggles of last season.
“We’re going to get excited before a game and we’re going to have fun,” he said. “We need to have fun with this and enjoy it; enjoy the ride a little bit.”
Experience helps
One of the keys to MSU’s success this season has been the improvement of junior quarterback Kirk Cousins.
Dantonio said Cousins’ development from the first to second year as a starter is similar to that of Brian Hoyer — Dantonio’s first quarterback in East Lansing.
“I just look back at the parallels to games we had in (2007),” Dantonio said. “In ’07, we were a good football team, but we lost games close.”
Hoyer and MSU had a 7-6 record in 2007, before going 9-4 his senior season. Similarly, Cousins and MSU have won more games so far this season (8) than they did in all of 2009 (6).
“The second year, Brian Hoyer established himself, and we won a lot of close games,” Dantonio said. “And I think that’s what’s happening here.”
Player updates
Remaining true to his policy of not discussing personnel issues, Dantonio refused to comment on the status of suspended senior cornerback Chris L. Rucker.
Rucker was arrested for operating a vehicle while intoxicated on the morning of Oct. 10 and was suspended by Dantonio. Rucker then was ordered to serve 10 days in jail for violating a term of his probation, which stemmed from his involvement in a November 2009 assault in Rather Hall.
Although Rucker will be released from jail Thursday, Dantonio did not say whether he will play this Saturday or for the rest of the season. Rucker is not listed on the depth chart.
However, Dantonio did shed some light on the status of injured junior receiver Keshawn Martin. Suffering what appeared to be a lower right leg injury in the first quarter Saturday against Northwestern, Martin might be able to play against the Hawkeyes.
“It’s not season-ending,” Dantonio. “We’ll see if he can play this weekend.”
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