BATON ROUGE — LSU continued its preparations for Saturday’s Southeastern Conference opener against Auburn with a two hour practice on Wednesday at the LSU practice facility.
LSU, ranked No. 14 in the nation in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches poll, enters the contest with a 2-0 overall mark, while Auburn is 2-0 overall and 1-0 in league play.
“Well guys this has obviously been a different kind of week for us,” LSU coach Nick Saban said. “I think this is as catastrophic a thing that’s ever happened in my lifetime. We’re really sorry for all of the people who were affected by it and all the families who have losses because of it. I know our team feels the same way. We took a little time yesterday to have a moment of silence for them.
“I think at yesterday’s practice everybody knew about the tragedy and the focus was pretty good and things went well. I didn’t feel like it was a distraction. I think today there was a lot of distractions because there were a lot of questions on the player’s minds on whether we would play the game or not. So to get the news right before practice started, that we were going to play the game, was probably helpful to them.
“I know a lot of people have a lot of questions on whether we should play or not and a lot of people have a lot of opinions about that. In my opinion, if it were a security issue we wouldn’t want to put any of our fans, players, our institution, or anybody in this country in any danger relative to playing a game. On the other hand, if it’s not a security issue, the terrorists that do these types of things, when you change your lifestyle and you don’t go about your business the way you need to go about it, they’re making you change your lifestyle and they are actually winners. That’s how I felt about it.”
The Tigers will work out again on Thursday followed by a walk-thru in Tiger Stadium on Friday afternoon.