MSU football: Survival mode

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A game that was exhausting just to watch ended with Colin Neely draped on the grass after making the play that won it.

It ended with Greg Jones holding his head in his hands, in an apparent mixture of fatigue and disbelief, then finding Jerel Worthy on the bench and giving him a captain-to-freshman pep talk.

It ended Michigan State 40, Purdue 37, despite most of the other numbers screaming big win for the Boilermakers. And it ended with the Spartans eligible for a bowl game, for the third straight season under Mark Dantonio.

"Well it was big, there's no doubt about that," Dantonio said after his team's final defensive stand was capped by Neely's sack of Purdue quarterback Joey Elliott. "We played the game. We didn't go into the bag and wait."

MSU (6-5 overall, 4-3 Big Ten) likely will play in a third straight bowl game for the second time in program history. The first three-bowl stretch was 1995-97 under Nick Saban.

That isn't guaranteed, though, unless MSU beats Penn State in next week's regular-season finale, or unless Michigan loses to Ohio State to leave the Big Ten with seven eligible teams for seven bowl slots.

The Spartans weren't concerned with such details after a wild comeback in front of 48,408 fans at Ross-Ade Stadium. They were still trying to sort out the details of what had just happened on a sunny and unseasonably warm day.

"Nerve-racking, I'll say that," Dantonio said.

"A lot of what happened out there happened very, very quickly."

Senior kicker Brett Swenson kicked the game-winning 21-yard field goal with 1:51 seconds left. It was his fourth in four tries on the day, two from 52 yards.

Swenson's winner was set up by Keshawn Martin's 85-yard kickoff return.

That came shortly after a Martin 45-yard run on a reverse to set up Kirk Cousins' 9-yard touchdown pass to Blair White - giving MSU a 37-34 lead with 6:59 left.

That was made possible by an Eric Gordon block of a Purdue field goal try.

And that came moments after Cousins hit B.J. Cunningham for a 73-yard touchdown, slicing into a Purdue lead that had grown to 11 early in the fourth quarter.

Got all that?

It all added up to a dramatic victory despite the fact that Purdue outgained MSU 524 to 362. The Boilermakers ran 92 plays to MSU's 49 and possessed the ball for 40 minutes, 39 seconds.

"You've got to credit Purdue, they played a physical football game and may have even deserved to win the football game," said Cousins, who was 11 of 25 for 208 yards and three touchdowns.

"We let the game get out of hand," Purdue receiver Keith Smith said after catching 15 passes for 152 yards. "We had a chance to finish them but just didn't do the job."

For most of the day, watching MSU try to defend Purdue (4-7, 3-4) was like watching someone try to catch a fly with chopsticks.

And that's part of the reason senior defensive end Trevor Anderson told his coaches to leave the locker room at halftime. He and Jones then gave some impassioned words to the other players.

"I really haven't seen it before, but it was the right time - you know, timing is everything," Dantonio said of the halftime players-only meeting.

"At the end of the day, they can call all the plays they want, make all the adjustments," Anderson said of the coaches, "but players have to make plays. ... Everybody was upset with the way we went in at halftime. That was horrible. It was horrible, it's not the way we were coached to play."

Defensive struggles continued in the second half, while MSU's offense and Swenson kept the Spartans in the game.

After Bolden ran for a 1-yard touchdown with 11:52 left, Purdue led 34-23 and Worthy responded by throwing his helmet in disgust.

"They challenged me and they won," Worthy said of Purdue. "I was upset I gave up a touchdown. The game got the best of me for a second. I've just got to stay composed. Trevor, being the leader he is, kept me in it."

Worthy responded with some key plays as MSU's defense stiffened in the last half of the fourth quarter.

So when it was over, Jones took a moment to absorb it, then found Worthy to thank him for staying in the game.

After losing late leads earlier in the season to Central Michigan and Iowa, the Spartans had found a way to preserve one.

"I was just thinking, 'It worked. It paid off,' " Jones said. "I believed the whole time. ... I told the guys we were gonna do it and we did it."