Michigan State football's focus on Michigan almost soothing: 'Gotta stay mission-focused'

EAST LANSING — Coaches did most of the talking. Players remained silent, reeling in the moment.

What appeared to be a salve heading into a rivalry week instead turned into a scab ripped off. An 18-point lead squandered in less than 15 minutes. A long bus ride from the locker room at SHI Stadium in Piscataway and an even longer flight home from New Jersey to dwell on the would-be end of a losing streak and a month-long crisis instead turning into another psyche-smashing defeat and continued anguish.

How Michigan State football collapsed Saturday against Rutgers, 27-24, became irrelevant by Sunday. Michigan was on the clock. The time to lament the loss had ended.

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Even if the scars hadn’t healed.

“We have a 24-hour rule. You go over what went wrong and how we can get better, and then we take that and just flush it down the toilet,” sophomore cornerback Dillon Tatum said Tuesday. “You have to move on to the next game. Because if somebody keeps thinking about the last game, they're not really focused on the next one.”

The Spartans host the No. 2-ranked Wolverines at 7:30 p.m. Saturday in the first night game between the two rivals at Spartan Stadium.

MSU (2-4, 0-3 Big Ten) enters on a four-game losing streak, which included blowing back-to-back fourth-quarter leads on the road (at Iowa on Sept. 30 and then at Rutgers on Saturday(, with the latest meltdown a result of two late special teams blunders. Those were compounded by an inability from the offense to move the ball and an in ability by the defense to stop the Scarlet Knights from steamrolling them down the stretch.

“It's not getting too high, not getting too low,” senior receiver Montorie Foster said Tuesday. “With the Rutgers game, I felt like we kind of did get too high and weren't used to having that lead and stuff like that. We didn't finish the game, and that was unacceptable.”

Interim coach Harlon Barnett tried to make it clear to his players Monday that he does not expect U-M (7-0, 4-0) to show any mercy when they meet for the 116th time.

“I told them, to be honest about it, they don't care that we lost the last four games. They're gonna come after us no matter what, right? And we would do the same thing, right?” said Barnett, who has experienced the game as a player and coach since 1985. “So we gotta get ourselves together and move forward.”

The losses at Rutgers and Iowa make MSU’s path to its first bowl game since 2021 extremely difficult. The Spartans must win four of their final six games, which includes facing Michigan this week, No. 4 Ohio State on the road Nov. 11 and No. 6 Penn State on Nov. 24 in Detroit. Two of their other three games are on the road, Oct. 28 at Minnesota and Nov. 11 at Indiana, with one home date remaining: Nov. 4 against Nebraska.

MSU has won 10 of the past 15 against U-M, though the Wolverines have won four of the past seven and are coming off back-to-back outright Big Ten titles and College Football Playoff berths. They are in the driver’s seat to make it three in a row this season, and the Spartans are well aware of that success.

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“I told the guys this yesterday, pre-practice. ‘This game, leading up to it, nothing else matters before or after this game,’” senior wide receiver Tre Mosley said Tuesday. “You could be 0-30. And when this game pops up on your schedule, nothing else matters, because that's how significant it is. And if you go out there and just focus on that and just worry about dominating this game, you can literally be 0-29 — if you win this game, that can make your season. And you could break this season, especially with the success they're having this year.

“So we just want to go out there and win. By any means necessary.”

The Spartans have not been able to do that yet this season against a Power Five opponent,; MSU's most recent win came Sept. 9 against FCS-level Richmond. That was hours before the suspension that led to the eventual firing of Mel Tucker, the only MSU coach to defeat U-M in his first two games coaching in the rivalry.

Barnett, who won once as a player in 1987 and has been part of the coaching staffs for each of the 10 wins since 2008, said the Spartans must conquer their inability to finish out games if they want to have a chance against the Wolverines. He pointed to one of his late father’s many sayings as to what must happen.

“He used to say, 'When the crowd starts hollering and the lights get hot, that's when I want to know if you can do it or not.' And so in crunch time, when the game is on the line, can you perform and do what you're supposed to do?” Barnett said. “Attention to detail, discipline, do your job. You don't have to do anything extra. Doing your job is making a play. And so when our guys get to that point — the offense, defense and special teams — that's when we're going to be playing to the best of our potential, late in games trying to finish them out. “

Senior left guard J.D. Duplain said doing that following a potentially spirit-crushing loss such as the one at Rutgers requires the Spartans to try and forget that game even happened. He added that having U-M next, in some ways, helps with that.

His message this week: “You gotta stay mission-focused.”

“I think, mentally, we're great,” Duplain said. “I honestly think we have one of the most resilient teams, just because we've been through a lot of stuff. And guys continue to show up every single day to get better. You're not dragging people along.

“It hurts for a little bit. Sundays are tough. But by Monday, everyone's locked in and we're preparing to win a game. … You want to have that emotion after a game like that. It hurts, it should hurt after all the time you put into a game. You have to go through that phase where it sucks for a little bit. But you watch the film, you learn from mistakes and you get better.”

This will be MSU’s second game against a top-10 opponent. The other — a 41-7 blowout by Washington in East Lansing — went about as poorly as it could have, less than a week after Tucker’s situation went public and in Barnett’s first game as acting coach. The Spartans gave up a school-worst 713 yards and 536 passing yards, tied for second-most in school history, to start the current losing streak.

The Spartans understand that can’t happen again. Because if it does, with the Wolverines and all the history of bad blood between the programs, the score could get even more out of hand.

“How things have been going is not the way we want them to go, but we're gonna continue to stay in the fight,” Tatum said. “We're never gonna lay down for just anybody. It's really just staying extra focused on playing this game and winning this game, because that's what here to do.

“We're not gonna go ahead and sit there and lay an egg, that's not what we do here at Michigan State. A game like this is very important to everybody that's come through this school. And we all know that we need to represent to the fullest.”

Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State football tries to mend damaged psyche with U-M up next