BATON ROUGE — The LSU football team practiced for the first time in full pads on Wednesday as the Tigers went through a two hour workout at the LSU practice facility.
After three consecutive days of two practices a day, LSU had only one session on Wednesday. The Tigers will practice twice on Thursday followed by the first scrimmage of the fall on Friday.
“I was really pleased with the effort the players put in today and the toughness that they persevered with,” LSU coach Nick Saban said. “We are kind of back to square one with the players because we are throwing a lot at them. “Today we went back to the fundamentals since it was the first day in pads. We had to see how much they could get the second time around. Some time in the near future we will have to make the decision as to which of these guys (freshmen) will be the ones we try to bring along and help us on the team this year.”
The Tigers spent a portion of Wednesday’s session focusing on individual work and fundamentals followed by team drills.
LSU capped practice with conditioning drills.
“We ran sprints at the end, and I though a lot of maturity and mental toughness that we hope are building in the program started to show a little bit,” Saban said. “It will be a challenge to see if we can sustain that, but I was pleased with the way we were able to practice.”
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Quotes from head coach Nick Saban
Wed. Aug 15, 2001
“I was really pleased with the effort the players put in today, and the toughness that they persevered with. We ran sprints at the end, and I though a lot of maturity and mental toughness we hope are building in the program started to show a little bit. It will be a challenge to see if we can sustain that, but I was pleased with the way we were able to practice. We had a few guys sick — Muskingum Barnes and Kyle Kipps with some kind of virus. It is an intestinal-type virus. A couple of other guys — Kory Hebert missed practice due to that, but other than that we don?t have any real serious injuries. Domanick Davis twisted his ankle, so he was in a red jersey. He still looked pretty good out there cutting and moving around. We are kind of back to square one with the kids because we are throwing a lot at them, and a few are confused- the young kids. Today we went back to the fundamentals since it was the first day in pads. We had to see how much they could get the second time around. Some time in the near future we will have to make the decision as to which of these guys will be the ones we try to bring along and help us on the team this year. Also, we will decide which ones are mature enough to be able to apply their ability to do the things we want them to do. I think there are 6-8, 10 of these freshman that will have a chance to do that, which would certainly help the depth on our team in quite a few positions. We have really been impressed by that so far in these two-a-day practices.”
“Right now a young player might be able to help us at receiver, since we lost Reggie. We have a couple of quality guys there. You know we worked Devery there some, and we are trying to see how the young guys can develop, and that will hopefully answer that question. We need to know so we can see where to use Devery the best, and the other guys as well.”