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Moving on: Pelini, Penguins turn attention to Sycamores
By steve wilaj
youngstown
It was certainly a different Bo Pelini than the one last seen berating referees on Saturday at Stambaugh Stadium.
At Tuesday’s news conference, the first-year Youngstown State coach addressed the media for the first time since Monday’s reprimand by the Missouri Valley Football Conference for his on-field actions in YSU’s 27-24 loss to North Dakota State.
“There’s a lot of things I regret,” said Pelini, who earned two unsportsmanlike conduct penalties in the game’s final 30 seconds for using profane language toward officials. “I hope there’s some regret in some other cases, too.”
It was the most Pelini talked about the late-game incident — which stemmed from a questionable pass interference call — as he obviously tried to avoid the subject .
He declined to comment on the pass interference call (which the MVFC office has said was correct), while he also spoke in a lower tone than usual, looking a bit defeated by the national backlash he has received within the past few days from his meltdown.
“I don’t concern myself with that,” Pelini said of the reprimand. “That was a difficult game to lose. It was disappointing and I’ve moved on to Indiana State.”
The Penguins (5-5, 3-4 MVFC) travel to Terre Haute, Ind. on Saturday for their regular-season finale at 1:05 p.m. against the Sycamores (4-6, 2-5).
With the contest likely not holding any playoff implications, Pelini wants to see a bounce-back effort from YSU — which squandered a 14-point, fourth-quarter lead against NDSU before losing the game and, in turn, its playoff hopes.
“It will test the maturity of this football team,” he said. “It’s part of life — you have your disappointments.
“We need to be a better football team this Saturday. I think we’ve made significant progress the last month or so and it needs to continue. That’s all you can control. You can’t worry about what has happened. You have to man up and take care of business.”
Penguins junior running back Jody Webb — who ran for 132 yards and two touchdowns on just five carries against the Bison — said YSU is ready for Pelini’s challenge.
“Sometimes life isn’t fair,” Webb said. “Our job is to give it our all. We did that, and at the end of the day, it wasn’t what we wanted. Now we have to do the same thing this week.”
What the Penguins did last week against four-time defending FCS champion and second-ranked NDSU was play four solid quarters of defense and three strong quarters of offense and special teams.
Despite the ugly ending, Pelini believes YSU took another step forward.
“I thought we played hard and I thought we played well,” he said. “I thought we walked off the football field on Saturday a better team than we were the previous week. We were just a play away, here or there, that could have changed the football game. I told our kids that they can look themselves in the mirror and feel good.”
The same probably can’t be said for Pelini right now, considering on Saturday he lived up to all the rage expectations that eventually chased him out of the University Nebraska. So while this week’s finale at ISU offers the Penguins a chance to finish 2015 with a winning record, it also gives the head coach an opportunity to end his debut season on a better note.
“You prepare the right way and move on,” Pelini said. “It’s about teaching them about life.
“Things aren’t gonna always go your way — they never [always] do. When you have a disappointment, you move on to the next thing. You don’t let it consume what you do going forward. You have to move past it, learn from it and go forward.”