DETROIT (Michigan News Source) – The state of Michigan is represented well in the AP Poll with Michigan coming in at eighth and Michigan State 15th. Michigan finished the 2021 season ranked third and received 1,203 points for eighth place. Michigan State came in ninth to end last season and has 631 points for 15th in the preseason poll.
After a week of practice, MSU head coach Mel Tucker talks about the progress of his team. “We had a scrimmage on Saturday and I liked what I saw. We had guys competing hard and I feel like we are getting better as a team and our coaches are coaching hard. There is a lot of bye-in out there. There are a lot of bright spots out there.”
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MSU had a nine-game improvement last year vs. the 2020 season and won a New Year’s Six bowl game vs. no. 12 Pitt in the Chick-fil-A Bowl. They return a very potent offense with a strong defense.
“We ask that everyone gets a little bit better every day. You add that up and it is a marginal gain. We are 18 days out so there is a lot of intentional focus with the group right now. We take it one day at a time and raise our level of intensity of what we do and attention to detail is a big part of that.”
With veterans on the team back from the bowl win, Tucker is relying on his players to step up to be leaders. He says, “We have guys stepping up and really taking the reins and they are realizing that it’s not just me pulling guys or the coaches. It’s the players. The players need to take ownership of the football team and I am seeing more of that every single day.”
Tucker is in his third season and continues to build his team up. It takes preseason, offseason, and regular season to do all of this. He address what he likes about building a team say, “I enjoy it all (building a team). There are different phases of the year. I say out of season and not off season because it is another phase just like preseason. It’s a special time of the year (preseason). It’s not like it use to be where you go off to camp like that where you could practice twice a day where you use to blow up mattresses indoors for in between practices but it still is camp. At this point we aren’t focused on our opponents but we are focused on ourselves. And that’s the difference.”
Michigan State opens up the season on September 2 vs. Western Michigan at 7 p.m.
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