State News football reporters Stephen Brooks and Dillon Davis discuss Mark Dantonio’s weekly press conference. Dantonio talks about improving as the Spartans move into November and the playing potential of sophomore defensive end Lawrence Thomas.
With MSU past the halfway point of its season, head coach Mark Dantonio’s message Tuesday wasn’t unlike the one he delivered the previous week.
After his team practiced poorly leading up to it and struggled to put away Purdue in a sloppy 14-0 win, Dantonio again emphasized testing his players’ ability to handle success as well as the increasingly difficult nature of the schedule as the season wears on.
Despite their solid record, the Legends Division-leading Spartans (6-1 overall, 3-0 Big Ten) sit just outside the top-25 polls as they travel to Illinois (3-3, 0-2) for a 3:30 p.m. contest hoping to wrap up an undefeated October.
“I think it’s good for us at this point in time during the season to go away and play because of the focus that will be gathered as we do move away,” Dantonio said. “So we look forward to that opportunity and that challenge.
“We have to play better to improve as a football team. We need to be playing our best football as we get into November, so I would think it’s very, very important at the end of October here to play our best football game. And then the next game needs to be our best, and then the next game needs to be our best.”
The Illini appear to be greatly improved from last year’s 2-10 debacle in head coach Tim Beckman’s first year. Beckman hired former Western Michigan coach Bill Cubit as his offensive coordinator in the offseason and he’s installed a pass-happy spread attack Dantonio called similar to what Indiana runs without the frantic pace.
Illinois, boasting the second-best passing offense in the conference at 287.7 yards per game, has yet to win a Big Ten game under Beckman’s command.
It should be another clash of strengths when the Illini line up against the nation’s No. 1-ranked defense. The Spartans are the only team in the country that ranks in the top five in total defense, scoring defense, rush defense and pass defense nationally.
“There’s no question we’re playing very well as a defensive unit,” Dantonio said. “We lead the Big Ten in a lot of different capacities, a lot of different areas, nationally ranked in a lot of different areas.
“But our focus is on our football team right now. Offensively we’ve got to throw the ball a little bit more effectively, I think, but possession times and different things that we’re doing offensively, turnovers and those type of things, sacks (allowed), we’re doing very well at.”
Hopefully healthy
MSU’s defense might get another shot in the arm – not that it necessarily needs it – against the Illini if sophomore defensive lineman Lawrence Thomas gets his first game action of the season, as Dantonio hopes.
Thomas is listed as the No. 3 defensive end for the second week in a row and dressed against the Boilermaker but didn’t play.
“When you miss August and you miss most of September, you’re missing a lot of the grind,” Dantonio said. So you don’t have that part of your game down. It’s a physical game inside there. There are 300 pound people pushing on each other and snapping on each other. So that’s part of the football game. We’ve got to get him some live reps. I think we’ve got to get him some live reps this week and we’ve got to see him come on.
“But there’s no question he should be a valuable member of our football team, and I keep trying to push the issue, but at the end of the day that’s his deal.”
Senior wide receiver Bennie Fowler is considered “questionable,’ Dantonio said, for the Illinois game after injuring his hamstring versus Indiana and sitting out last week against Purdue.
“Yeah, hoping to have him. We’ll see this week how it plays out,” he said regarding Fowler.
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