BATON ROUGE — During his weekly press luncheon, LSU head coach Nick Saban addressed the media before this Saturday’s Homecoming game against Louisiana-Lafayette. Shortly after, ESPN announced that the Oct. 12 matchup between LSU and Florida in Gainesville will be carried by the cable network at 6:45 p.m. CDT.
Quotes from head coach Nick Saban:
“I think the one thing that we did in this last game that may go unnoticed to some degree is that we really played hard and competed well in the game. It was a tough and physical game. Our guys played through a lot of mistakes in the game and overcame a lot, especially in the first half. I think that kind of attitude certainly served us well in this particular game.”
“Offensively, the offensive line did a fantastic job in this game, and even better than I had talked about after the game because lots of times after the game you are just thinking about the results because maybe you did not have a chance to study it or look it. We did an outstanding job of getting a hat on a hat and the tenacity that Domanick Davis played with in the game was phenomenal. He really did an outstanding job and Toe (LaBrandon Toefield) also did an outstanding job as well. We threw 17 passes in the game, or we called 17 pass plays in the game, and I guess we only threw 12. Some kind of way we have got to do a better job in the passing game. Sometimes I wonder if you are not so proficient at something, or do it so well the year before that when some of the prime time players leave, you try to just pick up where you left off the next year. It is like you never go back to primary school in terms of the development of the people that you have to do it with now, and sometimes you sit around a lot and try to figure out why it is not working, and maybe that is why it is not working.”
“We need to go back to the basic fundamentals of what we are doing and simplify what we are doing or “dumb it down” so to speak to get better execution. When you look at those 17 plays it is not all the quarterback. There are four our five times where the protection breaks down and I mean breaks down immediately because of a mental error. There are four or five times that we do not run the right routes or we do not run them correctly and there are several times where the quarterback either isn’t ready to throw the ball or misses a read and then it’s too late.
“We had three turnovers in the game, none of which are really physical errors. All those things are fundamentals in terms of how you look at it as a coach and when you turn it over three times on your side of the 50, including one time at the three yard line and get away with it with 10 points, that is good. It’s the players playing through and competing through a lot of things in the game and that being a real key to success. There is not doubt that was the case in the first half. The real turning point in the game was when they got it on the 35 after Matt (Mauck) got hit and fumbled and the defense stops them to set up a 47-yard field goal and they miss it. After that we buttoned down the hatches and played some Woody Hayes ball and run it 10 times in a row. I think eight of those 10 times we gained eight or more yards, which is boring ball, but it is effective and is what we needed to do to win the game. They didn’t seem to have an answer for it, but we are going to have to build on that. We are going to need to get it right now and it really doesn’t make a difference who we are playing. We need to get it improved and we need to get it right now, and that is what we are going to do this week.”
“I think ULL had a big win a week before last against UAB. It was a dominant win, 34-0. They played very well in the game in all phases of the game. You can overlook something by looking at final scores, because these guys were deep into the game 3-0 at Texas A&M, deep, I think 10-0 going into the fourth quarter. They were in the game with Minnesota for a long, long time as well, like 17-9 or 24-9, something like that. This is a team that is very well coached. I think Ricky Bustle has taken the kind of players they have there and instilled the type of intangibles in them in terms of playing hard, playing with toughness and believing in themselves, and getting better execution. Jon Van Cleave is a good quarterback and is throwing the ball for a couple of hundred yards a game and the strength of their team is their receiving corps, a couple of which we would have recruited here. We have a lot of respect for them and they have played well enough on defense and special teams to keep themselves in games. Ricky (Bustle) was at Virginia Tech and you know how sound a football team they were and this team is moving in the same direction.”
“From our standpoint we have a couple of injuries. I do not think any are significant. Travis Daniels re-injured his hamstring on the last play in practice last Thursday. Joseph Addai has a bruised knee and will probably be out of practice today but will be okay. Jack Hunt has a bruised lower leg and will probably miss practice today but should be okay too. Solomon Lee has a strained hamstring and will also be out of practice today. Ryan O’Neal has a strained ligament in his knee and will probably be out of practice today but should be okay. All these things are day-to-day, but we cannot rule any of these guys out in terms of the game coming up on Saturday.”