BATON ROUGE — LSU head coach Nick Saban addressed the media on Monday for his weekly press conference before the LSU-Alabama game on Nov. 4 at 2:30 p.m. in Tiger Stadium.
QUOTES FROM NICK SABAN’S WEEKLY PRESS CONFERENCE
“Everybody is going to want to know how the bye week went, and basically I’ll tell you Saturday after the game, because you never know how these things go. I think that we got some good things done in the bye week in terms of the fundamental work that we did last week in Wednesday’s and Thursday’s practices.”
“We started our first practice on Alabama, so we are a day ahead of schedule. I think that’s good and now we can get more rest at the end of this week, and that will help us physically going into the game. As a coach, you feel as if all those things are beneficial, but they are only beneficial if you play better because of them.”
“I think that Alabama has a lot of good football players. There is no question about that. Defensively, they are probably as athletic as anyone, they run well, and their front seven are all good pass rushers. Their defense is very highly ranked.”
“Offensively, their ability to run the football is as good as anybody that we have played, but they have struggled a little bit to score points. When they have struggled, it was because they turned the ball over, but when they haven’t had turnovers they played really well, like when they played Mississippi.”
“They are a very capable team. I think that they have really good players and are very well coached. It’s not easy for me to say that they don’t do a lot of good things, because they do have a lot of things that we need to try and work on to stop on both sides of the ball.”
“On special teams, I think that they have a lot of good players. It will be a very challenging game for us. I think that the key thing for us is that we need to raise our standards and expectations of what we want to accomplish as a team and what we have the opportunity to accomplish.”
“I’m hoping that our players are ready to do that. I hope that our players don’t have the mind set of being satisfied with where they are now, where they would say that they are relieved to beat Mississippi State, and all that. They haven’t presented themselves that way, but psychologically we need to focus on all of the things that we need to do.”
“We need to get better from a process standpoint on both sides of the ball to give us a good opportunity to win, because this is just as good of a football team that we will have played all year in my opinion relative to what they are capable of.”
“We only have two things to report when it comes to injuries. Last week, Jason Baggett sprained his knee, and is doubtful for this game. It’s not a surgical type of thing, but he will probably be out for this game. Ed Dangerfield, who we gave some resting time last week, to help him bounce back from his knee injury, is also doubtful for this game as well.”
“Somehow, I would like to send a message to the fans that we would certainly like them to be just as excited about playing at 2:30 in the afternoon than they are about playing at 7:00 at night. We’ve had some great crowds for a couple of big games this season, and I think that it has affected our players in terms of the way that they played, and have been able to come back in some games. It always helps to have a 12th man in a big game. We just need to have the crowd behind us in the daytime this week.”
“When we do good things, it gives our players the opportunity to play on TV, and I think that is a positive thing for the program, and for the players. The only thing is that we’ll have to start earlier and get up earlier for the tailgating or even come out the night before and do midnight shifts or whatever it takes. Let’s just get the stadium rocking by 2:30 p.m.”