Michigan State Head Coach Mark Dantonio News Conference Comments

Opening statement:
“Obviously it’s been a great pleasure for Michigan State to be here this entire week. We’ve had a great time, a first-class bowl in every respect. We’ve got an outstanding challenge in front of us in an opponent in the University of Georgia. We’re looking forward to it. I think you come to a bowl game like this and things go that first day, second day, third day you’re enjoying the bowl experiences and things are sort of moving slowly through the week. As you get to a point like this things go very, very fast for us. It’s our seniors’ last game, obviously. They’ve had a tremendous career here, the winningest group of seniors in the program’s history. It was their last practice yesterday and it was an emotional practice, at the end of practice just sort of saying goodbye and things of that nature. We’ll be ready to go. I think the energy is very, very good for us. We continue to just emphasize that we’ve got to bring our energy to this football game. When you look at Georgia you see a team that plays extremely hard as well. You’ve got to be able to maintain that throughout the game and ride it through the ups and downs of the football game and work through it.”

On quarterback Andrew Maxwell getting playing time in the Outback Bowl:
“We’re going to try and play Andrew Maxwell. We did do that in the Capital One Bowl in 2008 with Kirk Cousins and I think that it paid dividends for him. It not only gives him an opportunity to play in a big game in a big time environment, but it also sends a message to the rest of our football team in terms of leadership and those type of things. It sort of helps jump start, I think, 2012. So we will do that, probably, in all probability, but I’m not going to hold to that based on how the game is at and how things are going and what yard line and those type of things. But I would imagine that we try to do that at some point in time during the game.”

On whether he is anxious to get to Monday’s game:
“I don’t ever feel like the hay’s in the barn. We coach all the way up until the kickoff and we’ll coach through the game too. Today is a big day of meetings for us. We’ll meet for 30 minutes on special teams, an hour offensively and defensively, we’ll have a walk through, we’ll do the little things. It’s sort of repetitious because we’ve done these things for quite a while. We’re going to keep working all the way up to game time because on game day things are going to change. One thing about bowl preparation, you’ve had five weeks to sort of analyze who you are, what you’re doing and critique who you are. You have an opportunity to change some things, so I’m sure Georgia has changed some things as well. We’ve got to be prepared to move in that direction and adjust.”

On his team gaining maturity:
“I think our players have gained maturity in the past five years hopefully. But again it’s an end result game and I understand that. We’re playing an outstanding opponent. They’ve got very good players. That’s why we play. I can’t really answer to that except our players have been here. Although it’s the first time at Outback Bowl, we’ve been to January 1 bowls before, we’ve played in big time environments before. The conference championship game was a big opportunity to be on a big stage, and we’ve played big stage games before within our conference and in bowl games. Obviously we’ve got to put our best foot forward here as we go through. I do think our football team has maturity in that area, now we’ve got to be results oriented.”

On the fun the team has had during Outback Bowl activities:
“We’ve done some fun things. We’ve done some things I guess that are a little bit out there. I thought beach day was great for our guys. I saw one of our guys laying there with a piece of bread on his back staying motionless on the beach trying to get the sea gulls to take it off him with about 300 people sitting around him for about 20 minutes, so that was interesting. I saw guys that had never seen the ocean before get an opportunity to get on a jet ski and take off out there into the ocean. I saw one of our big offensive linemen put on a black speedo and walked around on the beach for a while, so it’s been an interesting week. Obviously we’ve done some things at practice a little unusual, so we’ll leave it at that.”

On how the senior class has impacted him:
“Really since the last few games of the season, going into our last game, Northwestern, and then the championship game and now this one, you’ve had a chance to sort of step back and look because they were all the last thing; last regular season, the championship and now the last game. How much have they impacted me? I have a tremendous amount of respect for them, love for them as people, because whether they play pro football or go on in life, they’ve been here through the tough times, they’ve helped build a program. The 2007 seniors that were red shirted, there are 2008 seniors that played all four years like Keshawn Martin and Trenton Robinson, they came here when things weren’t quite where they needed to be maybe. They’ve helped, I think, bring the program back to prosperity and helped develop the culture here.”