'Being Optimistic' Will be Crucial for Michigan State Going Forward
When you come off a loss as lopsided as Michigan State's was against Indiana on Saturday -- with just three games remaining on the schedule -- it's difficult to keep your chin up.
Michigan State had an opportunity to rebound from its road loss to Michigan in Week 9 by upsetting a top-15 team in Indiana. Instead, just about everything that could have gone wrong did.
It didn't look that way early on when the Spartans took a promising 10-0 lead going into the second quarter, but for the second straight week, they let things get out of hand and could never recover.
There's only so much a team can take when it takes losses in such fashion at what is the most critical point of the season.
Fortunately for Michigan State, it has another bye week, another chance to take. a breath and collect itself before it begins the last quarter of its season.
"I don't think it's always about being positive, I think it's about being optimistic, knowing that we can get some things fixed," said Michigan State coach Jonathan Smith after the game. "You [can] give all these locker room speeches, it's all about words going into action. Again, I've liked this group from the start. I think these guys will be back. They're disappointed, shoot, even embarrassed in there, but I'm pretty confident they know what's in front of them. They got three more opportunities to still feel good about a season."
This next bye week will be much different from the first. But the objective will be the same: getting a win the succeeding week, just as the Spartans did against Iowa.
"We did the deep dive of the six games [during the first bye week]; now we're only talking about three," Smith said, "but it gives us the chance to maybe study some other ideas and then again emphasize what we see out of these last three combined with the six we've seen and maybe come up with a new wrinkle or two in some areas that we need to improve on."
The Spartans will come out of the bye week looking to defeat Illinois on the road before finishing their season with back-to-back home games at Spartan Stadium.
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