Spartans vs Pitt

The Good...

Defense. Even without Nehemiah Warrick, there were turnovers, stops, sacks and basically a peformance that took over the game when there was no offense to do the job. Just as many TD's as the offense, and really had a share in the O's TD with the near-redzone turnover.

Downside, of course, were the facemask penalties and other personal fouls. But still... this is not looking like the leaky mess of a defense that we've gotten used to.

The Bad...

The aforementioned penalties, the dropped passes and some dinged up offensive lineman are disturbing old problems making an appeaerance right on cue. But having these crop up in a game you win is making the best of a bad situation. Gives the coach something to yell about while not costing the team anything in the standings.

A good insight into what kind of coaching staff the Spartans have is going to come this week. This is the "adversity" Dantonio says he wants them to work through. Now, it's time to see if that can happen.

There was also a blocked field goal try (following, of course, another stupid penalty). But, again, unlike previous years, a special teams hiccup doesn't cost the game.

The Future...

Well, this is right where I thought they should/could be on their way to a 6 win season. They have beaten three teams who more or less are performing like I expect them to have been playing.

But that's the past. The future looks very different from what I expected.

Before, I expected zero wins to come from the Ohio State, Penn State, Iowa and Wisconsin games. Now, Iowa and Wisconsin are not playing up to what anyone expected, so those games look more interesting.

I thought maybe one or two wins could be stolen from the Michigan, Notre Dame and Purdue games. Now, we definitely should take care of Notre Dame, and the Michigan game looks about on par with Purdue for challenge. Beating all three of these guys isn't crazy anymore. Still not likely, but no longer insane.

I figured two likely wins out of Indiana and Northwestern. This hasn't changed too much, except that the Northwestern looks slightly worse and Indiana slightly better

End result: MSU can probably get to seven wins the way things look now. Again, this isn't because of their success. It's the failure of the rest of the Big Ten to live up to expectations. The smash up derby that his taking shape looks a whole lot like the ACC last year... which quite improbably produced Wake Forest for a conference champ and BCS attendee.