GREEN & WHITE FOOTBALL

Dantonio on MSU's skid: ‘Outcoached, outtoughed, outplayed’

Chris Solari
Detroit Free Press

EAST LANSING – Mark Dantonio uttered six seldom-used words to highlight the biggest problems in Michigan State’s fourth straight loss.

Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio

“Plan, structure, execution.”

“Outcoached, outtoughed, outplayed.”

MSU’s 10th-year coach Sunday night recapped his reeling Spartans’ 54-40 loss to Northwestern from a day earlier and called it “one of the more poor outings we’ve had on defense.”

“I think six games in, you expect more from our entire football team,” Dantonio said. “I don’t know that it’s one particular group of people, and I include coaches in that as well. … I’ll take the brunt of all this, and we have to do better.”

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MSU travels to Maryland on Saturday (7:30 p.m./Big Ten Network) mired in the first four-game losing streak of Dantonio’s tenure and the program’s first since 2006.

The Spartans (2-4, 0-3 Big Ten) haven’t lost five in a row since the start of the 1991 season. They also haven’t dropped their first four Big Ten games since 2000.

“We’re walking down a long road,” Dantonio said. “We can’t turn and go back, you gotta keep going down the road as a group.”

Dantonio said no decision has been made yet at quarterback. Brian Lewerke started and was relieved in the third quarter by former starter Tyler O’Connor. A decision could come as soon as Monday.

Fifth-year senior O’Connor finished 13 of 21 for 281 yards with three TDs and an interception in the second half. Lewerke was 12 of 19 for just 99 yards, a score and no picks while also running for 30 yards in the first half.

Dantonio said the game “got a little fast” for Lewerke in the second quarter after picking up 73 of his passing yards and 24 of his rushing  yards in the first 15 minutes.

“I would expect Lewerke to play,” Dantonio said. “Does he start or not? He’s in contention.”

MSU played star Malik McDowell almost exclusively at defensive end against Northwestern, and the junior finished with a career-high 11 tackles, two of them for a loss and 0.5 a sack.

“I thought he played pretty well, and in some ways really well,” Dantonio said. “But it’s his first time out, so probably a little learning curve there.”

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McDowell’s defensive teammates, however, struggled to wrap up the Wildcats in space. Northwestern running back Justin Jackson finished with 188 yards and two touchdowns on the ground, while receiver Austin Carr had 130 receiving yards and two more scores among his 11 catches.

“We knew we needed to stop Carr, 80, and 21, Jackson, going into the football game,” Dantonio said. “Both of those guys, we did not stop.”

Dantonio said senior left tackle Kodi Kieler played “banged-up” Saturday after not practicing much last week. Kieler left last week’s loss to BYU and sat out the second half of that game.

Despite the struggles, Dantonio mentioned again after Saturday’s game that the Spartans won’t “cash out” and must first win the mental side before the games are even played.

“Obviously our football team isn’t having its best year,” Dantonio said. “There’s other football teams that have gone through this. … Coach (Harlon) Barnett brought up the year after the ’87 Rose Bowl – in ’88, when we started out 0-4-1. So I think we have players that can play, we have to play more consistently.”

Contact Chris Solari:csolari@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@chrissolari.

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