News From The Lockerroom
9/30/2000 12:00:00 AM | Football
Sept. 30, 2000
EAST LANSING, Mich. - MICHIGAN STATE HEAD COACH BOBBY WILLIAMS "Well, I have to take my hat off to Northwestern, I thought they did a tremendous job. I don't think we played up to the expectations I had for us today. Their offense was really, really tough for our defense to defend. Plus, their players made a lot of plays, and ours didn't. Our offense had several opportunities. We were deep in their zone many times, but we just couldn't make the play.
"It's one loss, and we have a long season to go. We just have to get our guys healed up. We have a lot of injuries on this football team, and we have a lot of young guys playing, so hopefully we can get some of the injured guys back next week to get ready for Iowa.
"There were so many plays in the game to be made, and we just couldn't make them... But I am not down on this football team. It's only one loss, and we knew going in this was going to be a tough football team.
"We have to stay focused. We just have to rally the troops, reload, and remain within the system."
(On Northwestern offense)
"It's just the combination of the no-huddle, the hard play action, the traps and the hard-running game that makes it so tough to defend. It's the same game plan they had up in Wisconsin. It's a very interesting offense, and as you can see, it gave us some serious problems.
"Just the missed tackles alone on defense really hurt us. When the offense is so spread out, if you miss just one tackle, the rusher is really going to gain some yards."
(On Ryan Van Dyke)
"I think he was feeling a lot better this week, but he still wasn't in a position to play. We'll have to re-evaluate his situation next week, and hopefully he'll be ready to go against Iowa."
(On Jeff Smoker)
"You know, Jeff can't do it by himself. We had some protection breakdowns, and he threw some passes that probably should have been caught. But he's just a freshman, and he has done a lot of good things for us. Things can only get better for him, and I am certainly not down on him."
NORTHWESTERN HEAD COACH RANDY WALKER
"I think overall we played pretty solid. It was a nice job by the offense and I knew that it would be because of the optimism we had coming in. We are a better football team this week than we were last week. We came out of the blocks and got the job done."
(In response to the scoring battle in the first quarter) "We continued to play and stayed on target. But it took playing hard for 60 minutes it get it done, not just one quarter. This game was step four and now we have to look forward to step five and Indiana. Our goal is to continually improve from one week to the next."
(In response to the defensive effort) "We are going to find a way to get the job done. The odds were long and the task was difficult, but we never underestimated the idea of good old fashion work ethic and it's something that the defense and the entire team has bought into."
"There were a lot of real positives with this performs. More significant is that I was not surprised at what we did. Last week we battled back, scratched and crawled, we played that 15 rounds it took to get the W. But this week, when your up by a few scores, you start to lose focus and your mentality changes. I know and that's what made me most nervous. It has to become a concern, because in 25 years of coaching I have witnessed some crazy things. But it didn't seem like our guys let off the throttle at all today and that's the way it should be."
MICHIGAN STATE RUNNING BACK T.J. DUCKETT
"They just came out and played a great game. We didn't execute too well and they are a good team and they proved it today."
"We have to start all over now, start from ground zero. We have to go back and look at our mistakes on film and try to capitalize off them."
MICHIGAN STATE DEFENSIVE TACKLE JACE SAYLER
On the Northwestern offense
"Everything that they did we planned for and they just did a great job of executing and we didn't do a great job of filling our gaps."
"After a loss we have to forget about it right away, which is something we have to do as a team. Just rebuild and get better as a team. Next week will be a great challenge for us as a team and a great challenge to our character to see how we come back next week."
MICHIGAN STATE WIDE RECEIVER MARCUS WATERS
"We practiced against their defense all week so we were ready for it but our offense could have been a lot better today, we didn't play too well today, we have to really step it up. I expect more out of myself and I think the team does too."
"We have a lot of people hurt now so someone is going to have to step up and help out."
MICHIGAN STATE QUARTERBACK JEFF SMOKER
"We are a team that can definitely rebound from this loss. We made some mistakes today and didn't play our best and we have to come out next week and practice hard and get ready for Iowa. We will be ready."
"We did have some chances today and we just were not able to finish. We executed well for a little while but we didn't keep it up the whole game and you have to play a complete game and offensively we didn't do it today."