RADIO RECAP: Michigan State DT Simeon Barrow withdraws from portal, Harlon Barnett talks Minnesota
East Lansing, Mich. – Michigan State interim head coach Harlon Barnett joined Spartan basketball play-by-play broadcaster Will Tieman Thursday night for Barnett’s weekly radio show.
Barnett discussed defensive tackle Simeon Barrow’s decision to withdraw from the transfer portal, Jalen Berger’s season-ending injury and Saturday’s game against Minnesota.
Michigan State DT Simeon Barrow withdraws from portal
Midway through Barnett’s radio show, news broke that Barrow would be withdrawing from the transfer portal after officially entering on Tuesday.
Barnett said during his Monday press conference that Barrow met with him that morning to discuss his intentions to enter the portal. One day later, Barrow was officially in. But on Thursday morning, Barrow returned to Barnett’s office to inform him that he would be withdrawing from the portal.
“After re-thinking it, (Barrow’s) going to be with us,” Barnett said. “That’s a good thing. A lot of times people will say, ‘He quit on the team’ initially and all that kind of stuff. But you have to understand what these young men are going through in this time of social media and people contacting them and saying, ‘We’ll give you this amount of money if you jump in the portal’ and all this kind of stuff.
“Once he came to himself and was able to get away and talk with his family a little bit, he said, ‘I need to stay here, where I started.’ He always said he loved Michigan State. So he will be back. We’re glad that he’s back. We welcomed him with open arms. And I checked with the team to make sure. We didn’t just do it, we checked with everybody on the team. (They said), ‘Yeah, bring him back. Yes, we want him back. We want him back because he can help our team and he’s a great guy.’ Obviously they love him because they voted him captain. Now, coming back, he’s not going to be the captain, but he will be out there playing.”
Michigan State safety Malik Spencer, Barnett’s player guest on this week’s show, was pleased to hear the news.
“I’m not going to lie, Simeon’s a beast and he’s super strong,” Spencer said. “To me, I feel like he’s unstoppable. I’m telling you, that d-line, once them boys get to clicking, it’s going to be over for sure.”
Jalen Berger out for the season
Barnett during his Monday press conference noted that Berger would likely miss the rest of the season due to injury. Barnett confirmed that on Thursday, saying Berger received surgery this week and is done for the year.
“(Berger) was coming on, so another chance for others to step up and show what they can do,” Barnett said.
Berger was sidelined for two games after suffering an injury against Richmond on Sept. 9. He returned for the Iowa game on Sept. 30, but was re-injured on Oct. 21 against Michigan after tallying just one carry.
Without Berger, Michigan State will rely heavily on Nathan Carter at the running back position, just as the Spartans did after Berger’s first injury. This time, though, Michigan State will have South Florida transfer Jaren Mangham available to help take some of the weight off Carter’s shoulders.
Mangham made his season debut against Michigan after missing the first six games of the season due to injury. Michigan State will also have Harold Joiner – who moved back to running back after practicing at linebacker during the fall – and Davion Primm available in the running back room.
Minnesota preview
Barnett said both he and the team came away with some valuable lessons after their 49-0 loss to Michigan on Oct. 21.
“We have to play way better than what we did,” Barnett said. “It was a spotlight game. Our guys, I think we’re young in some areas – in a lot of areas, actually – on the team. This is not an excuse, it’s just explaining what I think may have happened. They haven’t been in a lot of big games. They were doing things that they don’t normally do throughout the course of a week of practice. It was just a big game and we have to learn from it.
“Even as a coach, I have to learn, maybe you don’t hype it as much to them. We tried to let them know the importance of the game and how serious it is, but maybe you back off a little bit and let them just go play. I did say, ‘It’s still 11-on-11 football,’ but you can’t get so hyped that you forget everything (you have) to do. But we’ll work on that and get better at that because we have some more big games coming up.”
Barnett allowed himself a bit more than 24 hours to reflect on the loss.
“It wasn’t fun right after the game,” Barnett said. “We still have the 24-hour rule. After games, I say 24 hours but it takes me a little bit longer. I can eventually just shake it off, but it takes a little while. But once I do, I’m ready. So I’m good to go, moving on toward Minnesota and ready to get after these guys.”
In his press conference after the Michigan game, Barnett admitted that he was probably a bit too lenient with the players in the weeks following his hiring as interim head coach. Barnett’s goal was to be as compassionate as possible to help keep the team together during a chaotic time. In doing so, he might have let things like tardiness slide, which he normally wouldn’t do as a coach.
But after Michigan State’s loss to Michigan, Barnett told the team that he’s “just going to be him” in an effort to clean up discipline-related errors on the field, some of which might have originated from bad habits off the field.
Barnett said the approach has worked well thus far.
“It’s been working out really well,” Barnett said. “There’s a young man that won’t be traveling with us this weekend because he was late a couple times. He understands that, we had a great understanding and it was good. But he’s not going to travel. I’m not saying names, so don’t ask. But that’s how it has to be because I truly believe – and I’ve always believed – how you do one thing is how you do everything, and in particular how you do off-the-field stuff. Do you go to class, are you on time to class, on time to tutors, whatever you may have? That all translates to on-the-field eventually.
“I always tell the guys, ‘It don’t get you ‘till it gets you.’ So when you’re disciplined in one area, you can be disciplined in another area. That’s what we’re going to do, tighten up the screws. That’s who I am. I was just trying to massage it a little bit early on because there was a lot going on, a lot of adversity and things going on, hitting the guys and I didnt want to be just, ‘Boom’ and then I’m hardcore on everybody and they find a way to escape. So we have them where we want them now and it’s time to really level up on our discipline every single day.”
With that new approach and the Michigan loss in mind, Barnett and the team will travel to Minneapolis with the goal of earning a win in Saturday’s game against the Minnesota Golden Gophers.
On his radio show, Barnett described Minneapolis as the “coldest place he’s ever lived in his life.” The former Michigan State safety lived in Minneapolis for two years (1995-96) while he played for the Minnesota Vikings in the NFL.
Freezing temperatures will be a factor for Barnett’s team on Saturday as well. It will be 34 degrees with a chance of snow in Minneapolis that day.
Barnett, however, is not worried about how Michigan State will react to the cold weather. From high school recruits to college student-athletes, Barnett has shared the same message to players who are concerned about playing in the cold.
“We get recruited against badly (because of) the weather,” Barnett said. “Teams down south always say, ‘It’s cold up there.’ So the counter, for me, is all these guys want to play in the NFL. I always say, ‘Who wants to play in the NFL?’ and everybody’s hands go up. And I say, ‘So what if Cleveland drafts you, or Buffalo, New York Jets, Giants, New England, Cincinnati, Seattle, Washington, Chicago? You’re going to tell them you don’t want their money? (No), you’re going to go play for them.’ And they play longer than we do. They go into December and January sometimes with regular season games. So you’re going to have to play in the cold at some point in time, more likely than not. So you might as well get used to it now in college.”
Barnett was complimentary of Minnesota (4-3, 2-2), which is coming off a solid 12-10 win over Iowa last week.
“Well-coached football team,” Barnett said. “Coach (PJ) Fleck does a great job with those guys. I can’t believe he’s in his seventh year up there because I can remember when he was at Western Michigan. But he does a really good job with those guys up there. (They’re an) RPO team. They like to run the football more than throw it and they do a good job at it. So we’re going to have to be ready to tackle the guys and wrap and squeeze. Especially in the conditions that we’re going to be in, we have to be able to wrap them up and get them down on the ground.
“On the defensive end, they like to crowd the line of scrimmage with the safeties as much as possible, almost like a nine-man front. Trying to force you to throw the football. So we will have some opportunities to make plays, we just have to go out there and do it. Just execute the game plan, be disciplined in everything that we do and we’ll be able to come out on top.”
To prepare for Minnesota, Spencer noted that Michigan State studied some of its film from when it played Rutgers on Oct. 14. Rutgers is an RPO-heavy team, like Minnesota. That’s no coincidence, given that Rutgers offensive coordinator Kirk Ciarrocca spent eight years as Fleck’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, both at Western Michigan and Minnesota.
Altogether, Barnett expects a physical football game on Saturday.
“It’s Big Ten football and everybody knows everybody else pretty much,” Barnett said. “It’s going to be smash-mouth. Guys are going to play hard, fast and physical. So they do a good job. And again, they have a good coaching staff over there. It’ll be a Big Ten challenge. But we’re looking forward to the challenge and we feel good about it.”
As difficult as the first five games of his tenure were, Barnett has continued to emphasize that his team is close to getting a win. Ahead of the Minnesota game on Saturday, Barnett all but guaranteed one.
“We’re going to go out and get a win this weekend,” Barnett said. “We’re going to go out and get a win. We’re going to play hard and we’re going to get this thing done. It’s time. It’s time. It’s time.”
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