BATON ROUGE — LSU continued to prepare for Saturday’s season-opener against Louisiana-Monroe on Wednesday as the 14th-ranked Tigers went through a two-hour workout at the Charles McClendon Practice Facility.
In what was a typical Thursday practice, LSU worked on everything from the 2-minute drill to special teams. LSU is one day ahead of their weekly practice routine due to the fact that they got started on the Louisiana-Monroe game plan last Friday. LSU will practice against on Thursday followed by a walk-thru in Tiger Stadium on Friday afternoon. Kickoff for Saturday’s game is set for 7 p.m. in Tiger Stadium.
The Tigers also welcomed offensive guard Stephen Peterman back to practice on Wednesday after missing the last two days to be with his wife Colleen, who gave birth to a 6-pound, 10-ounce boy, Stephen Frederick, Jr., on Tuesday in Metairie.
“Stephen had his baby and he was back today and we want to congratulate him and his family,” LSU coach Nick Saban said. “The team was really happy for him and I was really happy for him. He’s really excited about being a father.”
When asked if he or the team did anything special for Peterman, Saban joked, “Yeah, he got two days off of practice and that is about as special as you can get. I did not hear of anything else except that the whole offensive line said they should go and support him, especially during our practice time. Somehow though it did not seem to be necessary to them at any other time. In fact they told me that they needed to go to New Orleans and support him through his traumatic experience. Needless to say you know what I said to them.”
Saban also said that Tigers have practiced well this week, but it’s time to play a football game.
“We have been talking about this it seems like for a long time,” Saban said. “Practice has gone fairly well this week. I think the team is tired of practicing and I’m tired of them practicing. I think everybody is ready to play a game, and a lot of questions will be answered about a lot of things when we play the game.
“I do not think our team is tired. It has been awful hot but this has been the best-conditioned team that we have had and I think we have persevered a lot better than we have in the past. Hopefully it will show up in how fresh we are on Saturday. We are just looking forward to trying to go out and play a good game and have everyone compete at a high level and see where we are at and go from there.”
Saban also listed five players as being out of Saturday’s contest: offensive guard Terrell McGill (bruised kidney), wide receiver Amp Hill (knee), wide receiver Craig Davis (elbow), tight end Kory Hebert (ankle) and linebacker Philip Maxwell (foot). Maxwell became LSU’s latest player to fall victim to an injury as he broke his foot playing soccer after practice on Wednesday night. He’s expected to be out of action for six weeks.