Michigan State University Athletics
Michigan State-Purdue Postgame Quotes
10/16/1999 12:00:00 AM | Football
Oct. 16, 1999
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -
Michigan State head football coach Nick Saban:
?Purdue played an outstanding game today. Drew Brees and Chris Daniels played very well and we got beat by a good football team. We didn?t pressure the quarterback. Brees has great vision and if you give him time, he?s going to find somebody. After Amp Campbell got hurt (hip pointer) in the first quarter, we couldn?t cover Purdue man-to-man. We played a lot of young guys in the secondary and Brees took advantage of every mistake we made. Daniels made some great catches, but we didn?t cover him very well at times either. He?s a very good receiver and he?s become the go-to guy for Purdue.
?Football can be a very humbling game and vanity can be dangerous. This game can slam you in a hurry and it did today. After beating Michigan last week, people started talking about the Heisman Trophy, an undefeated season, Big Ten and national championships. The focus and concentration weren?t there. I?m not blaming anybody else but me.
?Penalties really hurt us, especially the personal foul in the third quarter after we held Purdue on third down. I was pleased with the way we battled back in the second half, but we need to play with better focus and more discipline. You can?t win football games without disciplined play. It kills you. We did all the things that you can do to get beat.
?After an impressive opening drive (91 yards in 10 plays), we didn?t get a lot done on offense. We seemed out of sync on offense most of the afternoon. We didn?t play well defensively in the first quarter either. We settled down early in the second half but by that time, we had dug ourselves a huge hole. We let several chances to get back into the game slip away late in the third quarter.
?We?ll see how we respond to this setback next Saturday. Wisconsin is playing as well as any team in the league right now. We?ll find out a lot about ourselves next week. We?ll certainly test our maturity and character.?
Michigan State strong safety Aric Morris:
?You can go two ways after a loss like this. You can stay down or you can take it as a slap in the face and come out and play ever better than before. The way we played today against Purdue isn?t acceptable. We?re still a great football team. I want to see where our heads our next week.?
Michigan State quarterback Bill Burke:
?I made a lot of bad throws. When you turn the ball over like that, you don?t give your team a chance to win. Those turnovers were killers because they led to scores and a huge halftime deficit (14-35). We just couldn?t get out of that hole.
?At times, it seemed like certain players weren?t mentally into the game. We weren?t nearly as physical today and that?s been our trademark this season.
?I was surprised by all our stupid penalties. You can?t do those things. It was a definite lack of concentration and focus on our part.
?On this day, we got beat by the better football team. We had a lot of penalties and turned the ball over too many times. You can?t do that against a dangerous offensive team like Purdue.?
Michigan State cornerback Renaldo Hill:
(Purdue?s Chris Daniels) ?I thought he was a good receiver, but I didn?t see him exploding like that on us. We were more worried about (Vinny) Sutherland and (Randall) Lane. It?s tough because they have so many receivers who can do the job. This all falls on the secondary. Today was a wake-up call. We?ve got to regroup.?
?We might have laid back in practice this week and not even realized it because our confidence was so high after beating Michigan. We felt we were the team to beat.?
Michigan State defensive tackle Nick Myers:
(Media attention after last week?s win over Michigan) ?It got to a couple of players. We didn?t have the right mindset today. A couple of players got big heads. Today was a smack in the face. We aren?t as good as we thought we were.?
Michigan State wide receiver Plaxico Burress:
?Drew Brees is an exceptional quarterback. It was just one of those situations today where they executed their plays and we didn?t execute ours.?
