East Lansing, Mich. - Michigan State suffered one of its most disappointing losses of the Mel Tucker era Saturday against Indiana, losing 39-31 in double overtime to the now 4-7 Hoosiers on Senior Day. How the Spartans respond in a hostile environment against No. 11 Penn State is priority number one for Tucker and his staff.

But Tucker is used to situations like these.

“It’s not my first rodeo,” Tucker said. “You have to decide what is the next right step to take and what is going to be helpful for the staff and for the team to move forward. And it’s standard over feelings, over emotion.

“I had a coach tell me after the game, ‘I don’t know if I’ve ever lost a game like that.’ And I was like, ‘yeah, that was a tough one.’ But then I started to think back over my career and I said, shoot, that’s not the first time, by any stretch of the imagination. I went back and I showed [the disappointing losses] to the players this morning. I talked to them about it, I said this has happened. In terms of needing to win a game to go to a bowl game, been a part of that. Been a part of some losses, two-score leads halfway through the fourth quarter. Losing a home game, been through that against a rival school. That’s happened.”

Tucker didn’t reveal which games over his 25-year career he presented to his players Monday morning, but he had some notable ones to choose from in his days as a graduate assistant at Michigan State.

In 1997, Michigan State lost at Purdue despite leading by 11 points in the final minutes of the game. Michigan State attempted a field goal that could have pushed the lead to 14 points with 2:00 minutes remaining. But the field goal was blocked and returned 62 yards for a touchdown.

Purdue then recovered an on-side kick and scored the go-ahead points with :40 seconds remaining. MSU’s Chris Gardner badly hooked a 43-yard field goal attempt as time expired, causing Michigan State head coach Nick Saban to toss his headsets aside in disgust.

In 1998, Michigan State lost a pair of two-score leads to Purdue and Minnesota after failing to recover on-side kicks in the final minutes. The Spartans lost at Penn State in the season finale, settling for a 6-6 record and no bowl game.

“There’s very little difference between being able to win and being able to lose a game with these teams,” Tucker said. “When you look across college football and you look at the scores this past weekend and you look at the matchups, it’s like, what’s the difference? It’s one play here or there. It’s a very unforgiving business. It's a very unforgiving proposition. If you don’t make those plays, you don't prevent certain things from happening, then you're gonna lose. That's what happened. So we regroup and then we move forward.”

This year’s Michigan State team hopes to avoid a similar loss to Penn State in the last game of the season. To do so, the Spartans must improve their special teams operations, from field goal kicking to kickoff coverage.

Jack Stone’s first kickoff against Indiana went 58 yards to the Indiana seven-yard line, but Tucker said a mistake in the Spartans’ return coverage is what allowed Indiana’s Jaylin Lucas to return the ball 43 yards to the 50-yard line. Indiana scored four plays later on a Dexter Williams II keeper that went 34 yards, giving the Hoosiers an early 7-0 lead.

On the next four Michigan State kickoffs, Indiana didn’t manage a return longer than 22 yards. Tucker said the Spartans adjusted their coverages after the first kickoff, allowing for this sustained period of success.

But on Stone’s first kickoff of the second half, following an Elijah Collins 34-yard touchdown to give MSU a 31-14 lead, Lucas returned the ball 88 yards for a touchdown. As quickly as Michigan State appeared to put Indiana away, the Hoosiers brought themselves right back into the game.

“Consistency and performance is how you become successful,” Tucker said. “We’re just very inconsistent. We fixed [our kickoff coverage] and then we go two, three kickoffs and then all of a sudden it pops up again. Same return, same guys and we don’t do it right. We have to coach it better and we have to play it better. So we’re going to look at scheme, we’re going to look at personnel, we’re going to look at all of that. But that has to be fixed. Game adjustments, we have to have those things. We have to be able to identify what happened. We have eyes on everyone, so we know where the breakdowns are. And we go and address it, get it drawn up and go back out there, and execution is the key. We just didn’t execute on those kickoff returns, and it was devastating.”

Although the team isn’t commenting on the stakes of the upcoming Penn State game as it relates to their bowl chances, Tucker is aware of the importance of extra game and practice experience. Again, he’s been there.

“It can really help to lay a foundation to have a great football team the next season,” Tucker said. “So I’ve actually been through it. That experience, it helps quite a bit to know how to handle situations. It’s not like I haven't been through this before. And again, like I tell the players, I’ve never been anywhere where you weren't expected to win every game. So every year, every game is the most important thing in the world to everyone involved. That’s the profession that I’m in, that’s what I do for a living, so certainly I have to know how to handle these situations, the good and the bad.”