The Spartans are one of five Big Ten teams who currently sit at 0-2 in the conference standings. Aside from being winless, Illinois, Northwestern, Wisconsin, Michigan and MSU also share one other characteristic in common: They all opened up on the road.
“Hey, it’s tough to win on the road in the Big Ten,” said head coach Tom Saxton. “It’s not so much what went wrong, it’s just a lesson of how tough it is.”
The Spartans hope to continue the home winning streak for Big Ten teams at the friendly confines of Old College Field this weekend, but two undefeated teams stand in their way, including the eighth-ranked Purdue Boilermakers.
The Boilermakers are coming off a weekend in which they blanked Wisconsin 4-0 and shut out Northwestern 5-0, and Saxton is well aware of the firepower the 10-1-1 Boilermakers bring.
“Believe me, it’ll be the toughest team we’ve played so far, by far, and it’ll probably be the toughest team we play this season,” said Saxton. “It’s going to be a really tough test — Purdue’s a very, very dangerous team.”
While Purdue has started out hot, MSU’s opening weekend was not what they were expecting, falling to 1-0 to Iowa and 2-0 to Minnesota.
“Iowa and Minnesota are much improved teams,” said Saxton. “We played really well against Iowa and probably had an edge in quality in chances. Minnesota was a little different animal in that, in the first half was probably the only time I’ve seen this veteran team come out sluggish.”
“The positive side of it was that at half-time we made them perfectly aware that we could get back in this game
Support student media! Please consider donating to The State News and help fund the future of journalism.
