After Michigan’s 14-10 loss to Michigan State on Saturday, fifth-year senior center Pat Kugler didn’t hold back while talking about the Wolverines’ poor performance with the media on Monday.
“It was sloppy,” he said. “Everyone can see that. We need to tweak the little things and get better. We didn’t play our best game and everyone realizes that. If we play better, we’ll win games.”
Kugler insisted, though, that the season is far from over, and there is still plenty to look forward to.
“I don’t like Michigan State at all — we shouldn’t have lost to them, but we did,” he said. “We still have all of our goals in front of us — the Big Ten is still there for us. We just have to win out, and we’ll still achieve all of our goals — it’s plain and simple.”
If the Maize and Blue do win the rest of their games, they will almost assuredly be in the playoff, just as Kugler insinuated. The next step to completing that task is defeating Indiana on Saturday.
“They’re a fast-paced offense and their defense has always been pretty stout,” he explained. “We’ll start watching film on them today, and take every game one at a time from here on out.”
Michigan still has challenging contests against Penn State, Wisconsin and Ohio State — among others — left on its schedule, and Kugler had a pretty simple solution for relieving some of the pain of Saturday’s loss.
“Win those games,” he said bluntly. “It’s plain and simple. We’ve got Indiana next, but Ohio State is our big rival and we have to beat them. To eliminate our frustration, we have to beat them.”
If Michigan hopes to do that, it will obviously have to get a lot better offensively.
While many people are pointing fingers at fifth-year senior quarterback John O’Korn and his three-interception performance on Saturday, Kugler said it’s not just his fault.
“It’s not John’s fault — it’s a team game,” he explained. “We can’t have turnovers, but that’s on all of us, not just him. We have 100 percent confidence in him because he’s our quarterback. He was in here earlier watching film, and figuring out what he can do better. He’s focused on Indiana now, just like the rest of us. I don’t know how many times he was sacked, but we definitely need to protect better.”
If Michigan hopes to protect O’Korn better, the right side of the offensive line will need to step up. Redshirt sophomore right tackle Nolan Ulizio was replaced by redshirt junior Juwann Bushell-Beatty in the second half of the MSU game, but neither player seemed to have success.
“It’s just ‘next man up’ [at that position],” Kugler said. “Whoever is playing there needs to step up and play hard. People probably think it’s worse than it is, but it really wasn’t that bad. There were little errors, but scheme-wise it was pretty good.”
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