by Lee Feinswog
LSUsports.net
Can they win on the road?
“We have to eliminate mistakes,” senior defensive back Fred Booker said. “The biggest thing we have now is confidence that we can win the game. We wanted to win all the games, but we didn’t have the confidence.”
The LSU football team, which hasn’t won a game away from home since beating Auburn in 1998, is 0-2 in opposing stadiums this season, losing at Auburn and Florida. And now the Tigers go to Ole Miss for an 8 p.m. kickoff that will be televised by ESPN2.
ESPN has gotten its money worth from LSU this season (Tennessee, Mississippi State), but those games were in Baton Rouge.
“I think playing on the road presents a psychological disposition about how you have to approach things,” LSU coach Nick Saban said. “I think you have to be a little tougher mentally and emotion is certainly not going to be in your favor when you play on the road. So your character and attitude and what you’re playing for and how you get affected by things are what are most difficult to overcome.”
LSU, coming off three consecutive victories, all in the Southeastern Conference, has clinched a winning regular-season. But to guarantee a winning season overall, the Tigers will have to win at either Ole Miss, against Arkansas in Little Rock, or in a bowl game.
“I think you challenge them in a lot of ways and continue to build on the things you’ve done all year long,” Saban said. “How you compete in the game, how you play in the game and don’t get affected by the play before, the crowd doesn’t affect you and you keep focusing on the process on what you have to do to win. Not all the other things.
“Because the noise and the crowd and all that doesn’t have anything to do with the outcome of the game unless you let it. The field is still going to be 50 yards wide and 100 yards deep.”
Booker agreed.
“The biggest thing about playing a road game is you’re not going to have that support you have at home,” Booker said. “When you get down you can’t wave your hands in the air to get yourself pumped and get the crowd to give you that juice. You wave your hands on the road you’re going to get booed.”
Accordingly, Saban emphasized concentrating on the things LSU can control.
“If you focus on just that part of it, it’s not different playing at home or on the road,” the first-year coach said. “But if you let those things factor in — and I can’t deny they’ve been factors in our favor in the last three games we’ve won — we can’t let it be a negative on the road and we have to prove it.”
After winning at Auburn on Sept. 19, 1998, LSU lost its remaining four road games, three in the SEC and at Notre Dame. Last year, the Tigers went 0-4 away from home, all SEC games.
“We’ve still got things to prove this season,” Saban said. “One of them is can we win on the road?”