WEST LAFAYETTE, IND. - He didn't even turn around to look. Marcus Jones arrived in Purdue's end zone a mere 13 seconds after he set out for it from 92 yards away, and he didn't bother checking the grass behind him for cruel yellow flags.
"Nah, I had confidence my kickoff-return team wouldn't make the same mistake," said Jones, deprived of a nearly identical score a week ago by a holding penalty. "They told me they were going to block it the best they could. And they did that."
And Jones did the rest. The freshman from North Carolina took Carson Wiggs' kickoff in the center of the field, and jetted into a clearing that opened right in front of him.
"They were trying to squeeze me to the middle, so when I caught the ball, I realized the middle was wide open. I just hit it straight as fast as I could," Jones said.
He did, and this one counted. It came a week later than he would have liked, but Jones became the first Gopher to return a kickoff all the way since Jay Thomas' 91-yard romp against Florida Atlantic in 2007.
Not that it meant much to him. The third-quarter score cut a 42-point deficit to 35, he pointed out. Sort of takes the electricity out of it.
"It's kind of disappointing that you score when the team's down. You wish you could do it on the first kickoff return, the second kickoff return, to give your team a chance," said the 18-year-old Gopher. "It's not as exciting as it would be if you were up in the game."
Still, it beats some of Jones' other exploits Saturday. He caught a 32-yard pass from MarQueis Gray, the Gophers' longest offensive play of the day, but there were negatives, too. When he snuck into open space in the end zone during the second quarter, he dropped a sure touchdown pass. And on Minnesota's final possession, he reacted violently when a safety broke up a pass by coming over the top, a shove that earned him a 15-yard penalty.
