To Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio, Saturday’s matchup with Northwestern was a game of cat and mouse.

With 13:56 left in the game and down 24-14, the Spartans had a fourth-and-six from the NU 31-yard line and called a timeout. Rather than send out kicker Dan Conroy, who missed a 38-yard attempt in the first half, to kick into the wind, they took a delay-of-game penalty. In came punter Aaron Bates, notorious in South Bend, Ind., for his fake field goal pass in overtime to bring down Notre Dame earlier this season.

Hindsight is 20-20, but I and the well-informed at Ryan Field had a feeling about what was to come. Sure enough, Bates took the snap, coolly pulled the ball back to pass and threw it 23 yards to an open Bennie Fowler.

“It was a mouse trap,” Dantonio said. “We had to get them to take the cheese.”

That play was just the start of Michigan State’s fourth quarter onslaught, outscoring the Wildcats 21-3 in the final frame.

“What’s disappointing is that ‘finish’ is an M.O. of our program (here at Northwestern),” junior linebacker Bryce McNaul said. “We weren’t able to finish today in the fourth quarter.”

While coach Pat Fitzgerald and company might make that a goal of the program, NU simply isn’t there yet when it comes to “finishing.”

Coming into Saturday’s game, the Cats’ opponents had outscored them 39-32 in the fourth quarter. Of those six games, NU only put up more points in the final frame in a comeback win at Minnesota and a blowout against lowly-Illinois State.

The fourth quarter against the Spartans ballooned that total to 60-35 in favor of NU’s opponents.

“You’ve got to buckle it up and get ready to play for 60 minutes,” Fitzgerald said. “It’s not a 30-minute game, it’s not a 45-minute game, you’ve got to play for 60, and until we collectively decide to do that as a program, it’s going to be tough to win.”

It wouldn’t be fair to not to give credit where credit is due. The Cats pushed the No. 7 team in the country to the brink for 58 minutes. The running game finally found its legs against a solid defense, and may have found a valuable weapon in freshman Adonis Smith. Dan Persa was dandy as usual, rushing for three touchdowns.

But even Persa, whom many NU fans place high on the ladder of college quarterbacks, couldn’t finish. He threw for only 72 yards in the second half, missing open receivers in NU’s final two drives.

Compare that to Michigan State’s Kirk Cousins, who threw for 199 yards in the second half, including two touchdowns in the fourth quarter.

Junior safety Brian Peters got a hand on Cousins’ third touchdown, but it fell to B.J. Cunningham to put the Spartans up 28-27,

One more step by Peters, and he probably hauls in the interception and seals the upset for the Cats.

“There’s great teams moving forward in our (schedule), but we aspire to be a great team, too,” Fitzgerald said. “We’ve played pretty well, but we’ve just got to put it all together.”

That missing step is a sign that NU just isn’t quite there when it comes to the Big Ten’s elite.

Sports Editor Andrew Scoggin is a Medill senior. He can be reached at [email protected].