BATON ROUGE — With nine days remaining before traveling to New Orleans for the Sugar Bowl, LSU head coach Nick Saban spoke to the media before his team’s final week of practice in Baton Rouge begins.
Coach Saban Quotes
“We are very happy to be representing the SEC in the Nokia Sugar Bowl. It’s a great opportunity for our players and our institution to play in such a great bowl game especially in our own home state. I think it’s important that our players and everyone involve understand that we are carrying the SEC banner in this game. I have been very flattered with all the positive attention we have from winning the SEC Championship and playing in a BCS bowl game. But now I think we have to put that behind us and look forward to playing the Big Ten Champion Illinois in the Sugar Bowl.
“They (Illinois) obviously have a good football team, they’re ranked No. 7 in the country. They have only lost one game and won seven games in a row to get to where they are today. Probably because they have a quarterback who is a very effective player and they score 32 points a game. They have two good running backs in Antonio Harris and Rocky Harvey and a couple good wide-outs. They are a very effective team offensively and a very good team defensively. On defense they blitz a lot and they pressure the quarterback well. They have a couple good cornerbacks that are able to cover very well and have done well for them all year long.”
“I think they are going to try to make their claim to fame that if they win 11 games this year that they should be in consideration to be National Champions. They will enter the game in the same scenario as Tennessee who felt they had a chance at winning the National Title by beating us. That presents quite a challenge for our team.”
“I think it is going to be a real key for our players to get refocused now. We’ve had 10 days off and we will begin practicing tomorrow. This is an unusual time as far as time management is concerned for a bowl game. Because everything was behind a week and we have just finished finals, the players really haven’t had much time to relax. You usually have more time to practice. Because of those things we probably are not going to practice as much as we usually do for a bowl game because we haven’t had that much time off.”
“I think everyone knows Toefield’s status. He is out for the game and he will have surgery Tomorrow (Tuesday 18th). Rohan is still sore. He will be limited in what he can do. We will take things day-to-day, but I certainly think he will be ready to play in a few more days.”
“I’m not a doctor, but we researched the best ways to help Toefield in his surgery. We looked at two different procedures. One being the patella tendon method, which gives positive results. However tendonitis often occurs when you’re trying to rehab because you toy with the patella tendon. We also looked at a possible hamstring tendon transfer for him. That seems to cause fewer problems in rehab, but there is not enough evidence to show that long-term problems don’t occur. We will go with the procedure that we feel is best for Toefield. I think in college we should stay with the gold seal surgery that everyone knows is the best we can give him, which would be the patella tendon operation. Saying that his rehab will be between 4-7 months provided he doesn’t have any complications along the way.”
“I think it’s important to look at a bowl game like a one-game season. We thought about having practice Saturday because we had some recruits here, but we didn’t because I think that’s what drags out the duration of bowl preparation. I think you just need some time to resonate on what we accomplished and begin to focus on what is ahead. Hopefully that time off has passed and now we will have the emotion we need to practice well and play well in the bowl game.”
“I think as recruiters you always feel giving someone individual time is very important. Being two weeks behind hampered our efforts. I’m not sure how that will affect our recruiting in the end. But I will say that we have received positive attention from our accomplishments. We are getting a lot of positive feedback and that can only benefit recruiting.”
“They have beat all those teams that have aura. Whether they have that aura or not they are still a good football team. They had some pretty impressive wins along the way to being 10-1. They have a lot of players who have been playing since they were sophomores and I think they had a pretty good team then. I think they went 7-4 and got a bowl bid when we played them then. I think they have a great football team aura or no aura.”
“I did recruit a few of their players. Antonio Harris comes to mind. I didn’t look at their whole roster to think of it that way, but sure I recruited some of their players.”
“When I was with the Brown and he (Ron Turner) was with Bears. We would train together in Platenville, Wisconsin. We would meet in the basement of the VFW and socialize. Ron (Turner) was on the Bears staff and we got to know each other.”
“I have not talked to them (Marcus Spears and Michael Clayton about playing basketball at LSU) about it yet. I assume that they are going to join Coach Brady’s team. That was the plan when we recruited them and we support them. I know both guys did well in school so that shouldn’t be a problem.”
“There are some similarities between LSU and Illinois. Both are the big schools in their state. Illinois has Chicago, which has a lot of pride in its high school football with the Catholic League up there just like we have New Orleans and the Catholic league down here. New Orleans is a big part of our recruiting and Chicago is a big part of theirs. Both states are surrounded by states with great high school talent and our location gives us the ability to get some of those players.”
“They run a pro-style offense. They have multiple offensive sets. Three wide-out two backs, three wide out and a tight end, two wide out two backs and regular two-wide and two back sets. They are a typical pro team. They try to formation you and confuse you. But typically they run the same plays at you, which is typical of a “west coast” style team. No one really comes to mind as being similar to Illinois. Perhaps in Ole Miss in that they throw a lot of high percentage type passes. They also have some skill guys that can go deep and they try to run a lot of two pattern routes in the hope of making a big play.”
“Beating Tennessee is as big a win as I’ve ever had. I’ve been a part of some big games. I guess it seems the most significant because it’s the most recent. It was the first time I was ever involved in a conference championship game and it was really special to me to see our players play the way they did.”
“We’re obviously not worried about not playing Travis (Daniels). We’ve really been on a shoestring at corner because of the injuries we have had. He has improved dramatically through the course of the year. We just have to look at the positives that will occur from the experience he will gain heading into next year by playing in these last two games. It’s unfortunate that it didn’t work out the way we planned for it to work out at the start of the year, but it’s nice now not to have to worry about it.”
“I think we are going to get introduced at the Sugar Bowl Basketball Classic. I think it would be great for our guys to stay and support the basketball program.”
“We really haven’t had a chance to evaluate our quarterback situation. Rohan (Davey) has done an outstanding job all year. He is our starting quarterback he is our man. Matt Mauck did an outstanding opportunity when he had a chance to play. It turned out that because Matt was doing what he could do was an advantage to us because of the way they (Tennessee) rushed up front. We had the ability to scramble and run quarterback draws. We appreciate the way Matt played but we are going to give the guy who got us here every opportunity to play. We haven’t decided if we will use them both and I don’t know that we will.”
“Sure. (When asked if he would be interested in Brock Berlin if he is given his release to transfer from Florida).
“I know Illinois has a linebacker that has about seven sacks and 115 tackles. I know they have some great defensive backs as well. I’m not sure if they have first-round draft picks like Simeon Rice or Kevin Hardy, but I’m sure I’ll find out more about their defense as we study them more.”