Michigan State Head Football Coach Pat Fitzgerald Recaps Heartbreaking OT Loss to Illinois

Everybody ready? You guys good? Great.

Thanks everybody for being here tonight.

Really appreciate you covering our squad.

Uh, I wanna congratulate Illinois, uh, on a hard-fought win.

Uh, we ended up making it a game, and I'm proud of our guys.

They were resilient.

We had a bunch of guys go down in that game.

And for the guys to step up and fight the way that they did, I'm really proud of them.

Now we just gotta clean up a lot of mistakes.

Uh, just a lot of mistakes.

And, uh, not to discredit Illinois, they, they, uh, they came out, they had a really good plan, took advantage of some of our things.

I thought Joe adjusted well.

I thought we got the ball, and we were able to move it.

Um, but at the end of the day, we ended up one play short and, you know, that's my call, and I, I stood up here about, I don't know, six, seven weeks ago and said, "Scare money don't make money." So, uh, you know, we were, we were-- We felt good about the play and credit Illinois.

They, they defended it, so good for them.

So with that, I'll answer any and all questions you have.

Hey, Pat, at this point, we're midway through, uh, the season.

You mentioned resilience.

Yeah.

How do you balance the mental resilience and expectation for your players while still allowing for some growing pains?

Well, the growing pains are happening, so we've gotta coach through that.

So that's, that's on us as coaches.

Uh, we've gotta get guys to play and execute fundamentally and technically.

Uh, we've got them to play with-- We need them to play with discipline, and then we need to execute within the moment.

And at times we did today, and other times they, they, they hurt us.