Mark Dantonio
Mark Dantonio
Mark Justin Dantoniois an American football coach and former player. He is the current head football coach at Michigan State University, a position he has held since the 2007 season, presiding over one of the most successful eras in the program's history. He's led the Michigan State Spartans to three Big Ten Conference championships, and seven victories over archrival Michigan in eight years. In 2013, he coached Michigan State to its first 13-win season and the program's fifth trip to...
ProfessionCoach
Date of Birth9 March 1956
CityEl Paso, TX
They controlled the line of scrimmage up front. Usually when you're able to do that, you're able to win the football game. It was difficult to run the football.
They look like a team that can play with just about anybody.
They'll have that roar. It gets loud. There will be times when you can't hear. We need to be able to play under those conditions. They're going to have to experience it. We'll put music on (during practice) and play it loud so they can't hear each other, but it's still different.
It's not just another game, it's a huge game on our schedule. We'll measure our success as a football team against that game, and we always will.
They've got an exciting quarterback who can take a bad play and make it a good one. He's special. And they've got a tailback that's elusive.
Dave is an individual I have coached with in the past, and someone who I have the utmost respect for as a coach and as a person. He has a tremendous amount of experience at coaching offense at the Division I level, and has ties to the BIG EAST Conference as a player and a coach.
The thing I've always said about Connor, and mentioned to Coach Kennedy, he's going to compete, I don't care what it is, he's going to compete. He's going to know what to do and play hard.
I asked him about that. They wanted to make the commitment to play one or the other. I brought up the basketball issue, but there was no interest in doing that. Right now, from an academic point of view, he needs to concentrate on one sport.
He plays consistently. We've got to get all of our football team playing like that.
The difference in this game was we got no pressure on their quarterback and they got pressure on Dustin. Those were the two biggest factors. Louisville has a great front line and there was somebody in his face all day.