Post-Game Quotes: New Era Pinstripe Bowl

Michigan State head coach Mark Dantonio

Great football game. I thought we played very well the second half. Came away with a shutout in the second half from the defense. First half we needed to contain the quarterback, and blew a coverage for a long touchdown on sort of a trick play.

I thought our guys were relentless. Asked us to describe how we played, I thought relentless really on both sides of the ball. Had a lot of yardage in the second half, really three big drives in the second half. Don't come away with points, a couple of interceptions, an interception and a fumble. Some things you can control, some things you cannot. Huge plays by our defense. Three times on fourth down, getting off the field.

Elijah Collins has a big day, big runs. Brian Lewerke has a big day. Cody White has a big day. Huge catches at the end of the game there in the fourth quarter, contested catches.

Just can't say enough about our football team and our seniors, that they stayed together. When you win a football game at the end of the year, when you win a bowl game which so much goes into it from a preparation standpoint, it's a good feeling, a very positive feeling. We'll take it from there.

I'll answer some questions.

Q. In the second half, you were able to contain Newman, kind of cut down on his ability to escape. What things changed for you guys at that point?

I thought we did a pretty good job rushing their tackles back into the quarterback's lap pretty much, cut down his running opportunities. He's a good football player. To look at it, 17 rushes per 112 yards for their quarterback. He threw the ball down the field effectively, as well. Good football player. We needed to contain him.
Wake Forest has a good football team. So again, want to congratulate them and ourselves here and our players as we go forward.

I thought we did a good job just sort of confining him. He had some running opportunities early in the game.

Q. There were some times this year in games you didn't win where the defense had chances to put the game away late in the game. Turnovers in the red zone, missed field goal. What was the difference today that they were able to make those plays, put the game away?

Really I think we got stronger as the game went. When you look at it, they scored in their first series. Then they actually scored 21 points in the first half. As the game progressed, we got more confident, we got more I would say stronger, more confident. I think that was the difference. Our attitude and our confidence level just continued to just raise as we went.

Got off the field, made it very difficult to really do anything in the second half for them. Managed to stop them. But they have a good football team, no question.

Q. Seemed like the last drive when you were trying to score, before you ran out the clock, you remained aggressive with the play calling, throwing the ball around instead of running it. What was the thought process?

The next-to-last drive, the one where we kicked the field goal, just felt like two scores, with their explosive offense as it was, we needed to make sure we were staying on the offensive ourselves, at least get into position where we could kick a field goal, make it a two-possession game. That was the intent.

Again, I thought it was good play calling. I thought it was good execution. Usually that's what happens. Big catches by Cody White, big plays by Lewerke, big plays in that first series to get a first down, called option run type of thing. We had the ability to hand it off or keep it. He continued to make plays really throughout the day.

Q. Was there anything approach-wise that changed the way you were going after the quarterback in the second half, or was it a progression?

Sort of a progression. We actually pressured more in the first half than the second half. I think we got out of our gaps a little bit. He's a big guy. He's 6'4", 230. He's elusive, as well. He can run behind his pads as well as take it to it.

I thought we took an attitude more of capture the quarterback, in other words, push the pocket, put people back in his face. I thought that was effective. We kept telling our guys to push the pocket. More of a capture mode than a kill mode.

Q. You mentioned Lewerke's plays, the plays that Cody White made. You had several young guys show an extra juice, cutback ability, explosiveness. How much did the last month help, and maybe time to heal?

I think the young guys playing was really about hitting the reset button for them. They played, take a step back, what have I done, how can I get better.

Tre Mosley has a couple good catches in the game, huge catch. Almost goes for six. Makes a catch, turns up the sideline. I think two third-down catches maybe.
Julian Barnett has a catch. We played Nick Samac and J.D. Duplain on the offensive line. Both of those guys played a lot. Adam Berghorst…Matt Seybert sweeped his knee early in the bowl practices…(Berghorst) played a lot of plays. He was a guy who had virtually played very little coming into this football game.

We had young guys playing. That was good for them, to experience a win in a bowl game. I thought it was an exciting game. Excited about it. Guys are very excited about the win.

Q. You talk a lot about what seniors mean to a program. Obviously Brian has a big day in his last game. To see a guy like Mike Panasiuk grab that ball, score a touchdown in the beginning of the game, what does it mean to see guys like that have moments in this game?

When you're a senior, you play your last football game, you want it to be your best. Big difference taking off that jersey when you played your best or played as best as you can than taking it off and saying, Okay, I didn't do as well as I planned, something of that nature. There's a big difference in that.

I wish he wouldn't have taken his helmet off, okay? Cost us 15. But a great play by him, a very alert play by him. I thought he played very well throughout the game.
I think the way they run their offense, when you go against a fast tempo offense, they're a little bit different in the way they run it, you can practice it, but there's always sort of a point in time where you have to get used to the tempo, how they're doing things. I thought we did a good job with that as the game progressed.

Q. You talked about your excitement going into next season. Was that game an encapsulation of why you're excited about the future?
I'm always excited about the future, to be honest with you. I always look forward to the next challenge, next goal in your life, bringing people with you.

I think that's something that you always do. I think that's a natural progression for every football coach or every CEO maybe in the country: What's next.

I keep talking to our players about, What is next? How do you handle your challenges coming down the road for you? That's how we'll spring forward. That's always how we've done it.

Q. The pass catchers that you're expected to have back next year, how much does it help who is going to come next after Brian?
I think you got to have a guy that can catch it if you can throw it. If you got a big range, a radius of where you can catch the football, it's going to help any quarterback as we move forward here.

Lewerke made a lot of plays with his legs. Brian made a lot of throws, as well. What, did he become the all-time all-purpose leader, total offense? For a quarterback who really played three solid years, he was hurt some last year, so he didn't play in about four games, that's quite an accomplishment.

Q. You've talked about what a bowl win can do, maybe especially after a season like this. Can you speak a little bit about the vibe and how it may or may not change inside the program the next few months because of this win?

I can say that the bar has been raised here immensely. When you talk about, okay, we're a 7-6 football team, a lot of people are celebrating that as a tremendous accomplishment. To me, it's the basic minimum that you have to do.

That's where this program has come in the last decade. That's a good thing. You don't ever want to take anything away from the guys that have accomplished what they've done. We've had a lot of things go against us this year. Some things went with us today. Still we had to fight through adversity today. That's the nature of it.
Can't speak to totally to answer the question, but I can speak towards today, if that makes sense.

On Trenton Gillison…
Another guy that had a big game. A big 64-yard play. Had the big play down to the 5-yard line. Wish he wouldn't have fumbled it. They got players, too, did a great job stripping it. He made some big plays in the game, big catches.

Probably played 60 plays or 50 plays. He and Berghorst. Adam gets in there as well. Max Rosenthal gets out. Another guy, a redshirt freshman that hasn't played much, gets a catch.

From that perspective, we got guys stepping forward that are young players that really haven't played a lot. I thought Trent had a very good day.

He's a good ball receiver, good receiver.

(In closing), want to thank the Pinstripe Bowl for everything that they did for us this week. Tremendous. John Mosley, thank him personally, but also want to thank them for their organization, making this a great moment for us and our student-athletes. Everything that we could ask for from a bowl perspective was put in place, very well organized.

Obviously when you win the football game, it's sort of icing on the cake. We had a great experience here. Spartans will be out in New York City one more night. Hopefully it's a great night for them, as well.

Go Green.

Wake Forest head coach Dave Clawson

First off, congratulations to Michigan State. I thought they played a really good football game. We came out in the first half and played really well on offense. Bottom line in the second half is we didn't make plays on offense, and they made the plays on defense.

They did a good job of pressuring us. I thought their defensive line did a good job of rushing the passer. We just didn't get open on the perimeter.

We're not where we were at receiver to start the year. We had some guys in there that really haven't played all year. That's not ideal when you get to a 13th bowl game, play against a defense the caliber of Michigan State.

But I was proud of the way we hung in there. We made enough plays to stay in the game, but not enough plays to win the game.

On defense, it was kind of bend but don't break the whole game. We really only gave up two touchdowns. We gave up one on a busted coverage, then one second half touchdown. 21-20 at the half. We give up seven points.

I never felt we were stopping them. But we got those two big red zone turnovers, which kept us in the game. They missed a kick. I'm sure their coaching staff, they're probably feeling they could have won that game 38-21 or whatever.

Credit to our guys. We came up with two huge red zone turnovers, then we forced the fourth down. Kid missed a kick. With three minutes left in the game, we had the ball. We felt great about our chances to win it.

We didn't make enough plays. Credit to them, they did. I'm proud of the way our players competed, battled. We got really thin. That was a little bit the story of our season. I think when we were a healthy football team, we could play with pretty much anybody in the country.

As we thinned out here, got a lot of injuries, that's our next challenge as a program, is to develop the depth so, number one, we can play more guys, and number two, that when we do lose players the caliber of a Nate Gilliam or Sage Sarrat or Justin Strnad, we don't fall off as we have. That's our next step, our next challenge.

We're attacking it. I have confidence we'll get there. We're not quite there now, but that doesn't take away from how well Michigan State played today. I thought they played really well. They're physical. Their quarterback played well. We did not defend the pass well at all today. I thought we conceded way too many easy throws. Just the outside throws, we weren't even close.

Did a lot of good things this year. We didn't finish the way we wanted, but we'll get back to work in a couple of weeks and attack 2020 with a vengeance. We'll be missing some really great kids.

Q. Coach, obviously not the end result you were looking for. When you think back to this week as a whole, any positives that you take away from this experience?

Incredible positives. Everything positive but the end of the game. My thanks to the Pinstripe Bowl, Randy, Mark, Emily, John, the whole crew. What a first class organization. Everything this week was incredibly well-organized. Just really want to thank the whole Yankee organization for giving Wake Forest football such an incredible experience.

Their attention to detail, very grateful for everything that they did. I also want to do this, I really want to thank all the Deacs that made it up to New York. All the students, our fans, our alumni. I mean, it's that type of support that we get at bowl games is amazing. To come up two days after Christmas to New York, we are grateful for our fan base.

Q. Dave, you talked about the depth issues, the way you were attacking it last year. You did the deep dive in the summer on injury prevention. More of a look at that or just a matter of getting more players ready for bigger roles?

The injuries this year were different than last year. Last year we had soft tissue injuries, hamstrings, pulls. We didn't have that this year. We had freak things, whether it be a broken collarbone, torn biceps, a couple of ACLs.

We'll certainly do a deep dive on it. But the injuries we saw for this year were much different. They were worse. But we did not have as many guys down this year.
It just seems that we lost a lot of really, really good players. I mean, you certainly would argue that Justin and Nasir are two of our... Luke Masterson. Guys are good
football players. Maybe survive losing one of them. It's tough to lose as many as we did.

I think we just got to figure out a way as a program to make a commitment to play more guys early in the year. If you saw today, I mean, we had guys that we had redshirted that hadn't played all year that were getting meaningful snaps. Justin Williams, Isaiah Chaney, Zach Ranson. Those guys weren't even on our two deep six weeks ago. That happens. You got to find a way to survive it and still win. We didn't do that.

You look at why you didn't win games, why we didn't play well at the end of the year, that becomes an issue we have to figure out how to address so it doesn't happen again.

Q. Do you have any kind of update on Jamie? Hurt on the last drive.

He took a shot there. Kind of at the end of the game when they're teeing off, I didn't think he could protect himself. I mean, I think if there was another series in the game, we probably would have went in.

At that point it was two minutes, he didn't have mobility, they were teeing off. I didn't think he could protect himself. At that point I thought Sam would give us the best chance to win.

Q. Looked for a minute that it was going to be a storybook ending for your senior class. What has this class meant to the program?

Everything is in context. All these guys picked Wake Forest when we were 3-9, 3-9. I think they changed the culture of our program, that we now have a locker room and a team that expects to win football games.

Over the last four years, we've had 30 wins, which I believe is the second best, other than that stretch in '06 and '08. We've been to four consecutive bowl games for the first time in the history of the school. We've had four consecutive seven-or-more-win seasons for the first time since World War II.

I think the telltale sign of our program is we're not happy. We're disappointed we didn't get double-digit wins, that we didn't win our fourth bowl game in a year. I think we're past the point of just being happy to get to a bowl. I think these guys have changed the culture and expectation level of our program.

Q. You have a good football team, playing in the ACC. Michigan State finished eighth in the Big Ten. What would be your assessment of the Big Ten having faced Michigan State now?

I mean, Michigan State, they lost to No. 2 Ohio State, No. 8 Wisconsin, No. 8 Penn State, No. 14 Michigan. They're in a really, really tough division. You watch the football, it's good football. You take those games out of it, which you can't, but they're 6-2, outscored their opponents two-to-one. We knew this was a good football team that didn't play well against some excellent teams.

Q. Dave, you had 250 yards offense in the first half, only 101 in the second. Did they do something differently or change something you didn't pick up on?

Not really. I thought we missed some throws. We ran that little speed-out a couple times. Didn't throw that well. We had opportunities to make plays. We'll go back and watch that film. We'll have a hard time sleeping for a couple of days.

There were chances to win that game. I think as we became one-dimensional, we played from behind, they did a pretty good job rushing the passer. Again, credit to Michigan State. They're a good football team.

Sometimes when you don't make plays, the opponent has something to do with it. I certainly want to give them their credit and their due.

Q. Dave, you talked about having chances. Did this kind of seem like the quintessential Wake Forest bowl game, two red zone takeaways, then the missed field goal? Maybe felt like you were meant to win this game?

When we had the ball with three minutes left, down six, yeah, I mean, you were hoping it would have some of the endings other bowls have. Again, it wasn't meant to be. Again, it wasn't for a lack of effort, competitiveness, desire, all the intangibles I think our kids showed all year. Like every game, I thought we fought hard. Just missing a few bullets at the end that would have been nice to have.

Players Mentioned

Julian Barnett

Adam Berghorst

Elijah Collins

J.D. Duplain

Trenton Gillison

Brian Lewerke

Tre Mosley

Mike Panasiuk

Max Rosenthal

Nick Samac

Matt Seybert

Cody White

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