MSU's Jonathan Smith Talks Win over YSU, Gives Injury Updates

EAST LANSING --- Michigan State head coach Jonathan Smith seemed neither pleased or displeased with his team's performance on Saturday, as the Spartans beat Youngstown State 41-24 to improve to 3-0 on the season.

He certainly thought that there were a lot of things to clean up this week before taking on USC next Saturday, and he also gave a couple injury updates on some key Spartans. MSU was without star WR Nick Marsh for the entire second half and also saw RB Makhi Frazier, OG Luka Vincic and some others go down during the game.

Below is full video of Smith's press conference from after the game.

Watch Jonathan Smith here:

Here is also a partial transcript of his opening statement.

Transcript

Michigan State head coach Jonathan Smith talks to a referee regarding a call during the first half against Western Michigan at Spartan Stadium in East Lansing on Friday, August 29, 2025. | Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

"Three notes, we'll obviously take that. It's kind of what I told the team though, we've got more to us.

"Credit to Youngstown State, I thought some schematics gave us a couple issues, especially on defense on the one long run; we're not even kind of lined up correctly and it creases for the big hit.

"I thought schematically, in the run game offensively, we got more to us. We got to get something going there and make it a little bit easier on the quarterback, to get us a little better down-and-distances.

"The first half went quick on us. We had four total possessions offensively, we scored three of them. So you go into halftime with the thinking that we just wanted to get the ball going and then coming out of the second half, that punt return was huge, 'cause we didn't do anything offensively. Defensively, steps up, gets us three and out.

"Punt return by Omari (Kelly) was huge. Gets us down there, kind of separating things.

"We had one turnover tonight; tipped ball, play action pass, the defense bowed up. I thought that was really big, looking at the second half and everything. Turn the thing over and get it in a pretty good field position for them. Defense bows up and gets a stop, I think it was a field goal on that possession. So that was big.

"So again, we're gonna go back to work, similar like we're doing each week, right? We're gonna digest this tape and look at some things. We know what's coming in regards to this conference, starting conference play next week. The road trip, the team we're playing (USC), all of that's coming.”

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