BATON ROUGE — Coming off the Tigers’ season-opening victory over UL-Monroe, LSU head coach Nick Saban spoke to the media about this week’s road contest against Arizona (1-0) in Tucson, Ariz. Archived video is now available for members of LSUsports.tv.
COMMENTS FROM LSU COACH NICK SABAN AT WEEKLY PRESS LUNCHEON
“Well, I am glad that somebody else has to work on Labor Day. I have never had Labor Day off but I guess that is a good thing. If I ever have Labor Day off then I guess we have problems. Well I think games like this, intersectional-type games are a little bit like bowl games. You go into it studying a team from last year and trying to learn a little bit about them, probably not knowing as well as a lot of teams that you play in your league. I think it is also an opportunity for your team to establish some credibility on the national level relative to how the rest of the world views them.
“The PAC-10 obviously did pretty well against the SEC this past week and certainly our players need to be aware of that and know that our league is nationally-known and when we go play places people are anxious to play us. They also want to prove something when it happens, just like last year at Virginia Tech. Those guys acted like they had won the national championship after beating us. It is like they had something to prove, like that the Big East could beat an SEC team. That is something that we need to be aware of.
“I think this is a football team (Arizona) that is underrated, and I think people look at the surface only. Last year they scored a lot of points and were in a lot of games. They lost a couple of games that they actually had won. For example the Washington game last year they were ahead 28-26 with about five minutes left to go and were going in to score again and one of the guys on their team gets a taunting penalty after making a good block on a guy and they get a 15-yard dead ball penalty. They do not convert and Washington gets the ball and scores to win the game. They have a lot of capable players and I think they are very well-coached. I think John Mackovic is a good coach and has a lot of experience. Regardless of a lot of the things you hear I still think they do a good job and have a well-coaches team. I think their players play hard and they are very aggressive in how they play. I know they also play with the attitude that they have something to prove.
“I know how people think and that is exactly what you do not want to do as a competitor who is getting ready to play a game. You figure up all the reasons that things should go right or all the reasons that things should go wrong and it doesn’t necessarily happen that way. It happens the way you make it happen and I think we better be ready to make it happen the right way by how we play and continue to try and develop an identity as a team that plays smart football. After watching the film, the mental errors we made in the last game, I know it was the first game and it rained and all that stuff but that is no excuse to me. That is no excuse to me to not be able to play smart football in terms of executing and doing your job and not making mental errors. We had a ton of them on both sides of the ball.
“You want to play with a lot of intensity as a team which I thought the intensity in the game got better but our readiness to start the game and the sense of urgency that we had in the beginning of the game was probably not what I would like for it to be. Again, you could say a lot of things about that, like it rained and we had a delay and we never had one before but I do not care about all that stuff. You have to be ready to play when you are supposed to play.
“Arizona played two quarterbacks last week and both guys showed some effectiveness. They ran the ball more effectively. I know the one running back may have been injured in the game, it looked like he hurt his shoulder in the game, and I do not know if he will be back for the game, but (halfback) Mike Bell had a big game. They have a big offensive line and their quarterback (Nic) Costa is really a nifty guy who can really run and is a very good passer as well. (Ryan) O’Hara threw the ball effectively in the game as well, so they have two capable quarterbacks.
“They have lots of good football players and play much better on defense. Last year’s scheme is totally different than this year’s scheme. Mike Hankwitz is the coordinator there now who was at Texas A&M for years. He is doing a much better job and putting them in a much better position to make plays and be an effective defensive team. This is a good football team that we are playing and it is going to be a challenge for our team to go on the road to be able to play the way we need to play against a team like this and have success. There are distractions on the first road trip. There is adversity any time you go on the road. It is a different part of the country and a different time zone. Again, none of that stuff matters when it is time to play because we have to be ready to play and execute and play with the kind of intensity and tangibles you need for 60 minutes to be successful against a good football team.
“From an injury standpoint (cornerback) Randall Gay (broken left arm) is the only guy and you know about him. There is nothing different on him to report. (Craig) Buster Davis (wide receiver) will start back today in a red shirt today doing some practice. Randall will be out at least two weeks and then they will re-X-ray. It is not fractured all the way through so it is not a hairline fracture. We are going to re-evaluate him in two weeks and it probably depends a lot on his tolerance of being able to play with whatever they have to put on his arm.”