Coach Cooper Media Day Quotes – Ohio State Buckeyes
11/2/1998 12:00:00 AM | Football
November 2, 1998
COLUMBUS, Ohio –
%^$Talk about Michigan State.
%^$”Michigan State, in my opinion, has better athletes than any team we’ve played in the last four weeks. Sedrick Irvin is a very good football player. When they’re going to run the football, he’s carried the football far and away more times than anybody else on that team. They’ve got a couple wide receivers that are dangerous. They are throwing the football quite a bit now.”
%^$Do you look at games any differently with the release of the Bowl Championship Series rankings?
%^$”I’m more concerned about winning football games than I am about impressing voters.”
%^$What does Michigan State do well?
%^$”At times, they do a lot of things well. You look at the Notre Dame game, and they had Notre Dame 42-3 at the half. That’s the only game Notre Dame has lost so far. At times they look great, other times they don’t play very well. We’ve got to expect their best shot. There’s no question about that. They’ve got some talented football players.”
%^$”They are a big, strong football team. I’m assuming they will be physical. I know this – every year we’ve played them, it seems like it’s a hard hitting contest. We’ve had some good battles with them.”
%^$Talk about Brent Johnson and Clinton Wayne’s play so far this year.
%^$”There’s no question they’ve done a good job. Both those guys are starting for us right now. Brent Johnson and Clinton Wayne both are having solid years for us. They work hard in practice. Both of them can run pretty well, and both of them are getting better each week.”
%^$Michigan State has gotten out of the gate pretty well this year early in games. Does that worry you?
%^$”Sure it worries me. I hope they don’t get out of the gate fast against us. I worry about a lot of things with Michigan State. They have a very good kicking game.”
%^$Do you have any major concerns about your team at this point?
%^$”I hope we can stay healthy and keeping getting better. I don’t think we’ve played our best ballgame yet. I hope we can keep improving in practice and continue to play well on Saturday afternoon. Obviously I’m concerned about the number of penalties we’ve been getting. We’ve got to cut out some of those stupid penalties.”
