BATON ROUGE — After coming off his third straight Southeastern Conference win, LSU head coach Nick Saban addressed the media before the upcoming trip to Oxford, Miss., to face Ole Miss. Ole Miss has won three straight in the series, and the game will be televised nationally by ESPN2 at 8 p.m. CST.
LSU (6-3, 4-2 SEC) is tied for the Western Division lead with Auburn with two games left in the regular season. The Tiger became bowl eligible with a 30-28 victory over arch rival Alabama on Saturday in Tiger Stadium, its first such victory since Nov. 8, 1969.
Ole Miss (6-2, 3-2 SEC) is looking for its fourth straight victory over the Tigers, something it hasn’t done since 1952-57.
“After further review, we still won the game, even though we are disappointed with certain areas of our performance. It was a good win for our fans, our players, and for all the people that support the program. We’re certainly happy to get the monkey off of our back, relative to beating Alabama here in Tiger Stadium. I think that this win will be a positive for us in the future.”
“The one thing that I was disappointed with was that I thought that in this game, more the othergames in the past, we played more toward the scoreboard. We always preach to not play relative to the scoreboard, and we did on Saturday. There are lessons to be learned by our players relative to what might have happened and what could have happened for the future. That’s all that we would want them to learn.”
“I’m not trying to be critical, because there were a lot of good plays out there. There was a lot of good football played by a lot of different players, and it was a great team effort. Our guys played hard and I’m proud of them, but when we were ahead 14-7, we came out flat in the third quarter. We made a great comeback after they got ahead 21-14, but then when we got ahead at the end of the game we did not finish the way I would have wanted them to.”
“The other team could have gotten the on-side kick, had a big play, kicked a field goal, whatever. We’ve lost games like that before, and we certainly want to use this game as a learning experience for our players that might help them to manage the last five minutes of a game a little bit better.”
“I think that our special teams have been an asset for us all year, but I think that there were a few things in this game that could have been very costly for us. In the game, we had a point-after attempt blocked, they almost blocked a couple of our other ones, and we put the ball on the ground three times on punts. Those are the things that can be very detrimental, and those are things that we need to get corrected.”
“It was a great win. There were a lot of positive things for our players, and I know that you want me to jump up and down up here and say that everything is great, but we all need to decide if we are satisfied with where we are right now. That is going to be my question to the players today in practice. Do they want to take ownership to what they have a chance to accomplish this season? Which is how I look at it. All the things that you work for, you have to take advantage of.”
“We’re happy that Josh (Booty) was named the Southeastern Conference Player of the Week. He’s played very well for us the past three weeks. We have some things to prove this week, can we win on the road, and that is going to be our challenge this week against Mississippi. I think that Ole Miss plays harder than any team we’ve played this season and they are a very well-coached team. They have some very good players on offense. The quarterback, the two running backs, and the offensive line. They like to run the ball and they come downhill at you. I think it is going to be a challenge for us to stop them.”
“Physically and defensively they are not as big as some of the teams that we have played this year, but they are quick and they play hard. They play very well. They do a great job on special teams. They opened the game last week with a kick-off return against Arkansas, which set the momentum for that game. They are a very good, well-coached team, that plays hard, and are very disciplined. They don’t turn it over very often. They have some very talented players that they feature, and their offense is going to be difficult for us to stop.”
“That’s what we have to face right now, and it will be interesting to see if we have what it takes to step up and continue to grow. We need to do the necessary things psychologically to continue to play and be successful as a team”