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‘Like riding a bike’: Pat Fitzgerald victorious in return to sideline with Michigan State
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- ‘Like riding a bike’: Pat Fitzgerald victorious in return to sideline with Michigan State
EAST LANSING — Four years and eight days.
It was quite a long wait between wins for Pat Fitzgerald as he left Spartan Stadium for the first time as Michigan State's coach with a victory under his belt Friday night.
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His Spartans escaped a competitive Toledo squad hoping for an upset in East Lansing, but they pulled through to deliver Fitzgerald's first win since Aug. 27, 2022, the opener to his final season at Northwestern.
On the sidelines and navigating adversity in a college football game are what Fitzgerald's done for nearly 30 years. Getting back in the swing of things didn't feel too strange as Fitzgerald opened his tenure with a 30-20 win in front of the home crowd.
"I've been in a lot of one-score games. I'm not trying to be," Fitzgerald said. "I was actually pretty calm from the standpoint of it. I thought not being in a managerial role in a couple of years, it was kind of like riding a bike. Just kind of felt like, 'All right, here we go.'
"Just making decisions that I think I've been trained to do from great coaches that I've worked with and then the experience of great staffs."
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A new-look MSU still has a ways to go in establishing a strong culture and having their players synced up and operating at their highest level. But after just one game, their ability to rally together came through when the Spartans scored the final 11 points of the game to start off 1-0.
The comeback required some aggressive play calls on offense, with Fitzgerald opting to go for it on fourth down three times and making a key conversion for their game-winning touchdown.
Fitzgerald was pleased with his staff and coordinators — Nick Sheridan, Joe Rossi and LeVar Woods — in their first time collaborating within an in-game environment and how they responded to some rough moments that saw them trailing in the fourth quarter.
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"For us as a staff, today was a big test," Fitzgerald said. "We had our first time together collectively and I thought the communication was outstanding. I thought the adjustments were on point. The in-game coaching was really good and we identified the issues and tried to make corrections, proud of the staff of that."
It's a small result in terms of what Fitzgerald and the Spartans have planned as they try and establish more consistency for a team with four straight losing seasons.
But the sensation of winning is what Fitzgerald is after "again and again and again. That's what I hope it feels like."
Still, the only thing Fitzgerald wanted to focus on after the win was what comes next.
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"All we could do was go 1-0 today, so that's what we did," Fitzgerald said. "And I'd like to go practice because we have a lot of work to do, but really proud of the guys and I'm really thankful for them."
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