Good read from the "burg" - the Pittsburgh Post Gazette :
"The halfway point of the college football season carries a slightly different meaning for the Big Ten, whose teams account for exactly half of the top 10 squads in the most recent Associated Press poll.
The majority of the league’s five representatives aren’t a surprise. No. 2 Iowa was a preseason top-20 team coming off a 6-2 finish in 2020. No. 6 Ohio State is the four-time defending conference champion and has appeared in the College Football Playoff each of the past two years. No. 7 Penn State was also a preseason top-20 team. No. 8 Michigan was just outside the preseason top 25 and, beyond that, has all the advantages of a program with the sport’s fourth-highest-paid coach and the most all-time wins.
Sitting at No. 10 is a program that went 16-17 from 2018-20, including a 2-5 mark last year, and was picked in a preseason poll of writers who cover Big Ten teams to finish last in the seven-team east division. But in a college football season that has been full of surprises, Michigan State has been one of the biggest.
At 6-0 after a 31-13 victory against Rutgers last Saturday, the Spartans are off to their best start since 2015, a year in which they made the College Football Playoff. Under second-year head coach Mel Tucker, their improvement has been dramatic, both in the steps they’ve taken and how quickly they’ve done so.
How they’ve gotten to this point, however, isn’t exactly a mystery.
When Tucker was hired in Feb. 2020, one week after national signing day, he had little time to reshape the roster he inherited. The results weren’t pretty. Michigan State lost its season opener by double digits to a Rutgers team that finished 3-6 and though it pulled off upsets of then-No. 13 Michigan and then-No. 8 Northwestern, it lost by 42 to Iowa, 24 to Indiana and 40 to Ohio State. It added up to the Spartans’ second-worst win percentage in a season since 1991.
With a full offseason at his disposal, Tucker took adequate advantage -- not only of the extra time, but new NCAA rules allowing transfers to be immediately eligible. Michigan State added 20 transfers to its roster, a number of whom have helped the team reach its current heights. Linebacker Quavaris Crouch, a Tennessee transfer, is fourth on the team in tackles and second in quarterback hits. Ronald Williams Jr. and Chester Kimbrough, transfers from Alabama and Florida, respectively, are the Spartans’ starting cornerbacks. Offensive tackle Jarrett Horst, an Arkansas State transfer, has aided an offensive line that Pro Football Focus grades as the 11th-best run-blocking unit in the 130-team Football Bowl Subdivision.
One newcomer, though, has stood out above all others.
Wake Forest transfer Kenneth Walker III has emerged as one of the Heisman Trophy favorites in the season’s first half and for good reason. The junior running back, who ran for 579 yards in each of his first two college seasons, leads all FBS players in rushing yards (913, 122 more than the next-closest player) and rushing yards per game (152.2) while averaging 7.1 yards per carry. Last week against Rutgers, he rushed for 233 yards and averaged eight yards per carry, boosted by a school-record 94-yard touchdown scamper.
“I’ve always visualized winning the Heisman,” Walker said earlier this month, according to the Detroit Free Press. “I never really put it down. I think we had a talk and somebody talked with us and they told us to write our goals down so we can see it every day. Looking at that every day just gives me motivation.”
Buoyed by Walker, as well as much-improved quarterback play, the Spartans are averaging 36.7 points per game, more than double the 18 points per game they averaged last season.
Whether that excellence and the wins that come with it can continue is unclear. Michigan State’s schedule gets significantly harder in the second half of the season, with games remaining against Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State. Barring blowouts in each matchup, though, a program that went 55-16 from 2010-15 once again appears to be a contender."
"The halfway point of the college football season carries a slightly different meaning for the Big Ten, whose teams account for exactly half of the top 10 squads in the most recent Associated Press poll.
The majority of the league’s five representatives aren’t a surprise. No. 2 Iowa was a preseason top-20 team coming off a 6-2 finish in 2020. No. 6 Ohio State is the four-time defending conference champion and has appeared in the College Football Playoff each of the past two years. No. 7 Penn State was also a preseason top-20 team. No. 8 Michigan was just outside the preseason top 25 and, beyond that, has all the advantages of a program with the sport’s fourth-highest-paid coach and the most all-time wins.
Sitting at No. 10 is a program that went 16-17 from 2018-20, including a 2-5 mark last year, and was picked in a preseason poll of writers who cover Big Ten teams to finish last in the seven-team east division. But in a college football season that has been full of surprises, Michigan State has been one of the biggest.
At 6-0 after a 31-13 victory against Rutgers last Saturday, the Spartans are off to their best start since 2015, a year in which they made the College Football Playoff. Under second-year head coach Mel Tucker, their improvement has been dramatic, both in the steps they’ve taken and how quickly they’ve done so.
How they’ve gotten to this point, however, isn’t exactly a mystery.
When Tucker was hired in Feb. 2020, one week after national signing day, he had little time to reshape the roster he inherited. The results weren’t pretty. Michigan State lost its season opener by double digits to a Rutgers team that finished 3-6 and though it pulled off upsets of then-No. 13 Michigan and then-No. 8 Northwestern, it lost by 42 to Iowa, 24 to Indiana and 40 to Ohio State. It added up to the Spartans’ second-worst win percentage in a season since 1991.
With a full offseason at his disposal, Tucker took adequate advantage -- not only of the extra time, but new NCAA rules allowing transfers to be immediately eligible. Michigan State added 20 transfers to its roster, a number of whom have helped the team reach its current heights. Linebacker Quavaris Crouch, a Tennessee transfer, is fourth on the team in tackles and second in quarterback hits. Ronald Williams Jr. and Chester Kimbrough, transfers from Alabama and Florida, respectively, are the Spartans’ starting cornerbacks. Offensive tackle Jarrett Horst, an Arkansas State transfer, has aided an offensive line that Pro Football Focus grades as the 11th-best run-blocking unit in the 130-team Football Bowl Subdivision.
One newcomer, though, has stood out above all others.
Wake Forest transfer Kenneth Walker III has emerged as one of the Heisman Trophy favorites in the season’s first half and for good reason. The junior running back, who ran for 579 yards in each of his first two college seasons, leads all FBS players in rushing yards (913, 122 more than the next-closest player) and rushing yards per game (152.2) while averaging 7.1 yards per carry. Last week against Rutgers, he rushed for 233 yards and averaged eight yards per carry, boosted by a school-record 94-yard touchdown scamper.
“I’ve always visualized winning the Heisman,” Walker said earlier this month, according to the Detroit Free Press. “I never really put it down. I think we had a talk and somebody talked with us and they told us to write our goals down so we can see it every day. Looking at that every day just gives me motivation.”
Buoyed by Walker, as well as much-improved quarterback play, the Spartans are averaging 36.7 points per game, more than double the 18 points per game they averaged last season.
Whether that excellence and the wins that come with it can continue is unclear. Michigan State’s schedule gets significantly harder in the second half of the season, with games remaining against Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State. Barring blowouts in each matchup, though, a program that went 55-16 from 2010-15 once again appears to be a contender."
