During Saturday’s double overtime win for Michigan State football, wide receiver Nick Marsh recorded his first multi-career touchdown game. Through two games, Marsh has already tied his 2024 season total of three touchdowns, but those three came in 11 games last year.<\/p>\n
The energy is different with this program, and Marsh was quick to note that this year. This 2025 team is more committed to the program and each other, and it showed with the gritty 42-40 victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a different team. It is not the same team as last year,\u201d Marsh said. \u201cI feel like Coach Smith has this saying, \u2018the more committed we are, the more connected we become.\u2019 This year, we have been so committed to winning and becoming a team, and it\u2019s shown.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the biggest differences in this year\u2019s matchup against the Eagles was that Marsh actually got to play. Last year, he missed the contest with a leg injury. He was fully healthy on Saturday, and made it his mission to show BC what they missed last year. The sophomore took this game personally. The Eagles de-railed the season last year, and that would not happen again.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy whole thought process going into the game was that they didn\u2019t have a taste of Nick Marsh,\u201d Marsh revealed. \u201cSo I was ready. I felt like we had a pretty decent season leading up to last year(\u2018s game against the Eagles), we had a three-game win streak. It was real personal. I felt like that was the downfall of our season last year. I took it personal. I felt like we were on a streak, and I wasn\u2019t going to let that get in the way this time.\u201d<\/p>\n
The win was gritty, especially with quarterback Aidan Chiles suffering an injury right before overtime. Not even Marsh knew if the star quarterback would be back for the extra football. That said, if Chiles was ready, so was his second-year receiver.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be honest, I didn\u2019t know if he was coming back or not,\u201d Marsh admitted. \u201cThe other team scored, I see him get back out of his chair, and I said, \u2018oh, (expletive). It\u2019s time to go.\u2019 If he\u2019s ready to go, I\u2019m ready to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chiles found Marsh twice in the endzone (or dragging players into it) during the game among his four touchdown passes, and part of that was from the receiver\u2019s demand at halftime.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a conversation with coach,\u201d the sophomore told the media. \u201cI felt like there was a lot of man (coverage). I felt like they couldn\u2019t guard me. So I told coach when we got to the locker room, I\u2019m like, \u2018look coach, let\u2019s take a shot.\u2019 And he trusted me with that, we got back out there, took a shot.\u201d<\/p>\n
The River Rouge product did admit that his request was much more of a demand, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a little more demanding, actually,\u201d Marsh expanded. \u201cI told him, \u2018coach, I got one-one-one coverage. Give me the damn ball.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
In overtime, Marsh admitted being the receiver to come down with the two-point play would be nice, but he was just ready for the Spartans to end the contest. He trusted his teammates and was just ready to celebrate the victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid I want to personally score? You know, (expletive) the ball has to get in my hands then,\u201d Marsh answered. \u201cI trust my teammates, we practice it a lot, for execution. Once we got in that huddle, I told Aidan, \u2018take us home,\u2019 I was tired. I\u2019m like \u2018Aidan, I\u2019m ready to go home, man, take us home.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The team fought their own adversity, and came out victorious. This game was starred for a reason for the Spartans, and Marsh said it reveals the character of the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis game, for us, is very important,\u201d Marsh agreed. \u201cIt tested our brotherhood, our strength as a team, it tested how can we handle adversity. Going into overtime, going into double overtime, just keep fighting, keep straining. That shows a lot about us.\u201d<\/p>\n
One set of challenges the team had to face was winning the second half, something the program had not done against an FBS squad in Smith\u2019s 12 prior opportunities. That said, there was no panic in the locker room, everyone was ready to go out there, execute, and win the new game in the second half.<\/p>\n
\u201cErase the first half,\u201d Marsh said of the locker room discussion. \u201cWe had a pretty decent first half, didn\u2019t finish as strong as we wanted to, so the conversation when we got back to the locker room was \u2018let\u2019s go back out here. The score is 0-0.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He showed up in a big way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":19133,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173],"tags":[59,191,189,504,273],"class_list":["post-21880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","tag-featured","tag-michigan-state-football","tag-michigan-state-spartans","tag-news","tag-nick-marsh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}