Spartans Carry Momentum, Confidence into CFP Semifinal Against Alabama

Dec. 20, 2015

By Steve Grinczel, MSUSpartans.com Online Columnist | @GrinzOnGreen

EAST LANSING, Mich. â€" Lots of teams talk about knowing what they're capable of doing, especially after failing miserably to do it.

But at this point in recent college football history, it's so much more than a hollow platitude for Michigan State.

After what the Spartans have accomplished over the past six seasons, where they've played, who they've beaten, how they've won, when and why they've succeeded, they really do know , according to fifth-year senior fullback Trevon Pendleton.

That's the reason the only blemish on No. 3 MSU's 12-1 record, a 39-38 loss at Nebraska, still stings and why its confidence is sky-high as the College Football Playoff Semifinal against No. 2 Alabama in the Cotton Bowl Classic draws near.

"Credit Nebraska, they went out and made plays, but we know that we didn't play the way we're capable of playing that day," Pendleton said.

But how can the Spartans be so sure of their capabilities?

"Just the things you've seen throughout (preseason) camp and the different things you've seen from different players," said Pendleton, who as a sophomore walk-on had a clutch 2-yard touchdown catch in the 2014 Rose Bowl win against Stanford. "Some of the catches the receivers made, the throws the quarterbacks made, the plays the DBs, linebackers and D-line have just been unreal. So you see the ability they have.

"And then, the types of games we've been in and the success we've been able to have in those games. The way we've always been capable of bouncing back and getting our head back on track and keep pushing in the right direction after those unfortunate losses is just a testament of what this team is capable of. We obviously have the physical and mental tools to be a successful team moving forward and we just have to put those into place and go out there and do it."

It's peculiar, to say the least, that even after MSU's breathtaking last-second road wins over No. 2 Ohio State and No. 12 Michigan this season, its dramatic come-from-behind wins over No. 4 Iowa in the Big Ten Championship Game two weeks ago and the No. 2 Buckeyes in the 2013 league final, the remarkable upset of explosive and fourth-ranked Baylor in last season's Cotton Bowl Classic and the defeat of a rugged and fifth-ranked Cardinal team in Pasadena, along with 54 wins since 2011, that CFP talk eventually reverts to the last time it played the Crimson Tide.

It's as if nothing has really changed for the Spartans since Alabama manhandled them, 49-7, in the 2011 Capital One Bowl.

Nevermind that even the oldest Michigan State players were still in high school when that game was played at the end of the 2010 season, and that only a smattering of current Spartans watched it at the time or have seen it since.

The game remains a significant benchmark for head coach Mark Dantonio's nine-year-old program in the way it showed that despite 11 regular-season wins, MSU still had a lot of work to do before reaching the upper echelon. However, any relevance to this game with the Tide, and the pursuit of a National Championship, is lost on the Spartans.

"Michigan State's come a long way since then and we're going to come out and prove it," said junior defensive back Demetrious Cox. "I know Alabama is going to be one of the toughest challenges we've faced in the past many years.

"I'm not saying we deserve to be a step ahead of them, or anything like that, but I feel like would definitely play with them in past years, '13 especially, and then last year and this year."

Added fifth-year senior tight end Paul Lang, "In 2013, when we won the Rose Bowl, if the playoff were here then, we would have been in it, and we almost made it last year. So, we've just continued to press on with our goals ahead of us. With the games we've had, we are really prepared for this."

The rest of the country may be in awe of the Tide, but the Spartans are not.

"There's something to be said about us winning four bowl games in a row," said junior offensive tackle Jack Conklin. "We've beaten TCU, we beat Georgia (in the 2012 Outback Bowl), we beat Baylor, we beat Stanford. We've beaten some of the top teams in the nation, and I think we've been an underdog in every game.

"But that's what we've been built on around here. That's what fuels us and this is another game for us to show the world what we're made of. They're just another team. They've got a lot of great players, but when you're in the playoffs, you're not going to be playing a team that isn't full of trophy winners and All-Americans. We want to play the best."

Trepidation, on Michigan State's part, is also conspicuous by its absence regardless of how many would-be tacklers Derrick Henry, Alabama's 6-foot-3, 242-pound, Heisman Trophy-winning tailback, has pounded into submission.

"It's going to be a fistfight," said Lawrence Thomas, MSU's 6-4, 305-pound defensive lineman. "Of course, we're going to play downhill, play fast, play physical. We're excited to play a Heisman winner and we've got a great game plan for him and we're just going to play smash-mouth football.

"We've played in big games and in tight situations, so we live for moments like these. We just love the hype, we just love being underdogs, we just love people saying what we can't do and what people are going to do to us."

What makes such perceptions all the more curious is the way it categorizes Michigan State as some sort of outlier, far removed from Alabama's peer group, as if beating Ohio State, which defeated the Tide 42-35 in one of last season's CFP Semifinal games, has no transitive value whatsoever.

Dantonio doesn't pretend that Michigan State's 42-point loss to Alabama didn't happen five years ago, but he does seem to be amused by those who believe the Spartans' status as one of just seven teams to reach the CFP in its two-year existence came about by accident.

"I think we're comfortable, if that's the word I want to use," Dantonio said. "I think we've played well, especially these last three years, and really these last six years we've played very well. And I think that our players are a little bit more used to being on this stage and performing well in this environment. That's what has to happen if you're going to take steps in your program to get to where you want to go, (and) where we wanted to go at the very beginning of all of this was to win championships.

"I think the continuity in staff has helped us immensely and then the structure, the upgrades in facilities, and we just kept sort of pecking away. And you know, we found a way to win and we found a way to get to the bowl games and eventually we found a way to win the bowl games, which we have done the last four times against great opponents, I might add."

Since Conklin arrived at MSU as an unheralded walk-on in 2012, the Spartans have repeatedly found ways to clear most of the obstacles from their path to respectability. This would be a good time to deal a blow to misperceptions that continue to nag them.

"Now that we've had success, we know how quickly it can be taken away," he said. "We could have easily not won a few games this year and not won the Big Ten Championship and people would have been saying Michigan State's back to being Michigan State.

"But we want to change history around here. We want the norm to be, Michigan State, national power."