Mel Tucker outlines what Michigan State football's spring 'game' will look like

Mel Tucker’s culinary delights will be on display this weekend when Michigan State football once again opens its doors to fans.

The Spartans’ annual spring game won’t be that at all. Yes, there will be a few live periods of 11-on-11 hitting. But Tucker plans to show off his second-year program differently, giving those 6,000 who get into Spartan Stadium and watching at home on Big Ten Network a glimpse into what a normal workout looks like.

“It's gonna be a meat-and-potatoes-type practice. There's not gonna be a whole lot of French pastry in terms of inside the lines,” Tucker said Tuesday while previewing the Green and White exhibition. “And whatever's going on outside the lines, it is what it is. But in terms of the practice, we're gonna do what we do. We gotta get out there, and we gotta get work done. It's practice 15 for us, and it's another opportunity to get better, an aggregation of marginal gains.”

Tucker plans to have 10-15 periods in the two-hour TV programming window, using the last half of the practice for live scrimmaging.

In his previous collegiate stops, including his first year as a head coach at Colorado in 2019, Tucker always has operated with a traditional spring game. After losing 15 practices in March and April 2020 due to the pandemic, Tucker said putting a practice on center stage instead of splitting up into teams is a better way to showcase his program.

“We'll see how they react,” Tucker said. “That's part of the process, and that's really part of the progression. You just take it from the meeting rooms, and then you take it to a walkthrough, you take it to individuals and then you take it to group work. You take it to a scrimmage, and then you take it to a live game. This is the closest to a live game that you can really get, when you get into the stadium and you actually have fans and you do go live.

“Even though it's not going to be a total game format, there's going to be more of a glimpse into how we run our practices. It's going to be very competitive.”

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Tucker said the Spartans have been “relatively healthy” and have not experienced any “catastrophic-type injuries,” though he expects to know who will and won’t be available by mid-week.

“It means a lot to be out on the field. You can't make the club in the tub,” he said. “We need to be out there practicing and getting work and getting better. And that's how we have more competitive practices. The more guys that are available to practice and get out there and compete and get better, the better football team we're gonna have.”

Welcome back

Saturday will be the first chance for those limited number of fans who secure tickets to be able to see Tucker’s team in person.

The general public has not been allowed inside Spartan Stadium for a game since Mark Dantonio’s final home win Nov. 30, 2019, against Maryland.

“We'll have the band, we'll have the cheer team there. It's gonna be a great environment and something that we didn't have a year ago,” Tucker said. “And we're really excited to have that on Saturday.”

Spartans’ parents and family members were permitted to attend the Oct. 24 season-opener against Rutgers and the second home game Nov. 14 against Indiana. However, a Nov. 15 state order prohibited any attendees other than staff for the final two games at Spartan Stadium last fall against Northwestern on Nov. 28 and Ohio State on Dec. 5.

“We're all very excited for everybody to come back, even if it's a (small) amount,” senior linebacker Noah Harvey said Tuesday. “Just seeing people on the stands cheering for us, we all missed it a lot.”

The Spartans went 2-5 during Tucker’s first season.

MSU’s last public spring scrimmage was April 13, 2019, the 13th and final Green and White game for Dantonio, who retired after going 7-6 that season.

Recruiting strategy

A number of MSU’s incoming recruits have yet to visit East Lansing and meet Tucker due to the pandemic. However, at least two — Florida high school teammates Chuck Brantley and Steffan Johnson, both cornerbacks — said Monday on Twitter they will attend Saturday’s spring game to get their first taste of college life before they arrive for good this summer.

Along with them will be at least seven more transfers who will join the six who already enrolled in January. Tucker has said he plans to keep mining the NCAA’s portal this summer to add more players, but Tuesday he explained he wants that only to be a temporary solution.

More: Mel Tucker and Michigan State football amping up recruiting ahead of dead period end

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The goal? Get more recruits like Brantley and Johnson.

“There's a lot of activity in the portal, for us and everyone in the country. Our activity in the portal is gonna be based on the circumstances of our team,” Tucker said. “I just want everyone to understand that we're gonna do what we have to do to build our team, I don't anticipate necessarily been in the portal as much in subsequent years. We would ideally like to build our team through the high school ranks, and that's really our primary focus. We will use the portal to complement and supplement the talent on our team.”

Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @chrissolari. Read more on the Michigan State Spartans and sign up for our Spartans newsletter.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Mel Tucker outlines Michigan State football's spring 'game' format