Spartans Veteran LB Experiences Fifth Straight Loss to Buckeyes
Michigan State fell to the No. 3-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes, 38-7, at home on Saturday night in a less-than-impressive performance from the Spartans.
Saturday night's loss marks the ninth-straight meeting that the Buckeyes have won between the two teams. Redshirt senior linebacker Cal Haladay has now been part of five of those, never having experienced a victory over the Big Ten juggernaut.
After the loss, Haladay was asked about how he feels the program can close the gap with the talent and level of play that the Buckeyes have possessed for nearly a decade.
“I think we just need to execute better,” he said. “I mean I think today if we would have cleaned up some things, got off the field, giving the offense the ball back and instead of being on the field as long as we were, could have been a puncher's chance for this game. I think the game was a lot closer than the score dictated but at the end of the day, they made more plays than we did and that's just kind of what happened.”
Haladay had five total tackles en route to a 38-point invasion with three first-half touchdowns from the Buckeyes. The Spartans' defense had a few opportunities to get off the field on third and fourth downs, however, three of the six scoring drives for the Buckeyes were 10 plays or more.
“I mean, we just got to capitalize on opportunities,” Haladay said. “For the defense, I think we did what we wanted to do, make them drive the field, and they just made too many plays, and we got to make some plays too. We knew that they were really an explosive offense and had a lot of talent on their team and their their players made a lot of good plays today.”
The Spartans will have another difficult task ahead as they will travel to Eugene to play another top-10 team in the Oregon Ducks. The Green and White will try to avoid falling to 3-3 with what would be a massive road upset. To do so, they will have to learn from this latest loss.
“We knew it was going to be a challenge for sure, and we knew they had a lot of talent; we just needed to focus on executing better, and that was the main focus of the week,” Haladay said. “Consistently getting better every week in and week out and this week we're going to do the same process after the game and go back and get better this week.”
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