BATON ROUGE — LSU head coach Nick Saban addressed the media in his weekly press luncheon on Monday in the LSU Athletics Administration Building as the Tigers (1-1) prepare to face Miami of Ohio on Saturday in Tiger Stadium. Members of LSUsports.tv can watch the archive now.
QUOTES FROM LSU HEAD COACH NICK SABAN AT HIS WEEKLY PRESS LUNCHEON
“After viewing the film of the last game it really reinforced what I had said after the game in terms of the intensity our players played with, I think especially in the first half. I don’t think the third quarter was especially what we wanted it to be but I was pleased with the effort and toughness and the way our players competed in the game.”
“We obviously didn’t always get the execution exactly like we wanted it and that is something that we definitely need to work on and need to improve on. I think sometimes when you have young players you have to take it one step at a time and that is something that we are trying to do. We are trying to get down to compete in the game, play hard and give effort and then we will try to make the corrections we need to make to get better execution. I think one of the things that you need to do with these type of players, ones trying to develop, whether they have been starters before or are just playing for the first time is to get them to believe in the process of what they are doing rather than worrying about the results of what they do.”
“I think typically we all like to think of outcomes because that is what our goal is and that is what we are motivated to do, but the fact of the matter is if you do things correctly then that gives you the best chance to have success. Sometimes with older players they learn that through their experience, that if they key the right thing, do the right thing, key the right split, run the pattern at the right depth, that all those things in terms of the process, help get the kind of outcome that you want. That is certainly what we are trying to get our team to believe in now- doing it the right way and paying attention to detail will help our execution and that good things will happen because of that execution. We are going to work hard to continue to improve and I think we have a lot of work to do, but I am not disappointed at all with the effort that we had in the game and I think we accomplished a lot of things in this game.”
“I think the fact that we got Marcus Randall to play a couple of series in the game in the second quarter when it was still a game was a good thing. Did it affect the momentum of what we were trying to do on offense, maybe a little bit. I still think for the overall good of our team long term that was a real positive to get Marcus in the game to get him feeling better about himself physically as well as the fact that there are some things that he feels he needs to improve on so that he will be ready to play when the time comes, because he is a young player too.”
“This team we are about to play is obviously a good football team and they are sitting there right now after beating North Carolina at North Carolina and I am sure they are sitting there today saying ‘We should have beat Iowa too.’ I think they had two touchdowns called back in the game and that would have been the difference in the game. So they have a very good football team. They do have a very good quarterback who made freshman All-America last year and threw for 3,100 yards and 25 touchdowns and has thrown for almost 600 yards this year. They do a very good job offensively, are very well-coached and they play sound and aggressively on defense.”
“I coached in the MAC (Mid-American Conference), I played in the MAC and when I was at Kent State we beat Virginia Tech once and we beat North Carolina State once and Miami (Ohio) beat somebody in the Big 10 almost every year and they beat LSU in 1986. This is not an uncommon occurrence for teams in the MAC to have good programs to be able to beat Division I opponents. All that you have to do is ask North Carolina. Marshall does it and they are in that league, so I understand that to these guys (Mac), it is their dream to be able to play in games like this. A lot of these guys who play on teams maybe didn’t have an opportunity to go to those schools, like a Big 10 school or an SEC school or whatever and this is their opportunity to prove that they should have had that opportunity and they play that way. They will play that way in this game and they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. I feel like our players need to understand that because this is not a bad team that we are going to play.”
“From our standpoint we are going to have several guys in red shirts today. Not that we do not feel they will probable for the game, Eric Edwards will not practice today but Ben Wilkerson will in a red shirt on a limited basis. We will not make a decision about Eric Edwards until Wednesday or Thursday. Ben will go day-to-day and we will see how it goes with him.”
“We will find out today when we have our team meeting if our players understand how good of a team we are playing this week. We will be able to get the point across to them at 2:20 today when we have our team meeting. I haven’t really talked to the players about this, but we watched the film at 6:45 a.m. this morning and they were very attentive in terms of trying to learn some things that we need to do to get better. We will also find out how their approach this week in practice relative to preparation is because that will determine to a large degree whether they really understand. I think that if they watch tape, and they all better watch tape, then it won’t be hard to figure out even if we don’t say anything. The should see that their quarterback and their offense is especially good.”