LSJ Blogs: Hey, Joe

Happy opening day

Among the reasons tonight's MSU season opener should be interesting -- it's the first career game for a different kind of player than Tom Izzo has had.

MSU up to 10, 10, 11

That's No. 10 in both polls -- a six-spot leap and already back in front of Iowa, just a few days after losing by 31 to the Hawkeyes -- and No. 11 in the BCS.

Minnesota in a nutshell

MSU has nine wins for the 11th time in school history, can get to 10 for the third time (1965 and 1999) with a Nov. 20 win over Purdue, and can get to 11 for the first time ever the next week at Penn State, which is starting to look like a real football team.

McDonald out

Sophomore right guard Chris McDonald is not dressing for today's game, Jared McGaha is expected to start in his place. It appeared McDonald hurt a knee in the Iowa game.

Minnesota GameDay (plus some hoops)

Everything you need to know about the Big Ten race and what the Spartans need to do to stay on top if it can be found here. Also, some lopsided matchups, the updated Talkin' Spartans, and here's the rail with prediction:

Let's talk Minnesota

Phil Miller of the Minneapolis Star Tribune welcomes us into the Gopher hole...

10 a.m. chat reminder

Here's the link for our weekly chat. In the meantime, here's a football recruiting update as MSU looks to finish strong with its 2011 class.

MSU's Big Ten awards hopefuls

Five weeks down, four to go and there are some interesting races for individual hardware, most of them with Spartans heavily involved.

Dantonio presser

Mark Dantonio expressed confidence his team will recover from the Iowa loss, talked about a chat with Kirk Cousins --- who was doing some "soul searching" -- on the plane home, mentioned Bennie Fowler as a bright spot in Saturday's game, and brought up the Chris L. Rucker situation again for some closure.

37-6

It really comes down to turnovers. Three provided to Iowa, all Kirk Cousins picks, one brought all the way back, another leading to an Iowa touchdown. None created. Everything else followed from that.