BATON ROUGE — As reported throughout the day on LSUsports.net, 26 prospective student-athletes have signed National Letters of Intent to play football at LSU on Wednesday’s National Signing Day.
LSU head coach Nick Saban, who led the Tigers to the 2001 Southeastern Conference Championship and the 2002 Sugar Bowl Championship, spoke to the media at 4 p.m. CST.
Quotes from LSU head coach Nick Saban:
“There’s a couple things that you never have in this profession. You never have a bad spring practice, if you go out early to the NFL draft you always are a first round pick and if you get cut you are always the last cut. And of course, you never have a bad recruiting class. Those are some constants in coaching.”
“We had a great recruiting class, especially in the state of Louisiana. Last year we had some great really high profile All-Americans and we felt fortunate to get all of those players. This year, regardless of how you rate the crop of players in Louisiana, we did a good job keeping all of them here and I think that is a real key to our success.”
“We solved some areas of need. Terrell McGill is a great find for us. He’s a prototype offensive lineman that is really hard to find. We signed a lot of fast defensive backs and we are pleased with the quality in that area. Linebacker, we needed to get a couple good ones. It was unfortunate that we lost a good one today, but we felt fortunate to get the two we did get.”
“We were able to get a lot of speed and yet we still got a lot of skill with these players. Skyler Green is a fast type player. Having speed is important to the type of football we want to play here.”
“Recruiting is not an exact science. We feel really good about and believe in our evaluation process. I don’t know how our class rates, but I do know this. Football is a developmental game. Just because certain people are viewed as the pick of the litter, doesn’t mean that there is not still a lot of work to be done to develop them into the best hunting dogs.”
LSU’s 2002 Signing Class Included:
1 Parade All-America
(Justin Vincent)
1 PrepStar All-America
(Justin Vincent)
1 Member of Max Emfinger’s Top 125
(Justin Vincent)
1 Member of Tom Lemming’s Top 100
(Justin Vincent)
2 Members of The Sporting News Hot 101
(Justin Vincent, Lester Ricard)
3 Members of the Dallas Morning News Top 100
(Dominique Owens, Lester Ricard, Justin Vincent)
4 PrepStar Dream Team Members
(Justin Vincent, Lester Ricard, Cameran Vaughn, Kyle Williams)
4 Members of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Top 100
(Justin Vincent, Skyler Green, Lester Ricard, Kyle Williams)
9 Members of the Baton Rouge Advocate Super Dozen
(Skyler Green, Alonzo Manuel, Doug Planchard, Lester Ricard, Vernon Russell, Cameron Vaughn, Justin Vincent, Garett Wibel, Kyle Williams)
10 Members of the New Orleans Times-Picayune Top 15 Blue Chip List
(Skyler Green, Justin Vincent, Jason Spadoni, Blair Irvin, Garett Wibel, Tory Collins, Alonzo Manuel, Kyle Williams, Cameron Vaughn, Vernon Russell)