BATON ROUGE — LSU head coach Nick Saban addressed the media on Monday at his weekly press luncheon. Archived video of the meeting is now available on LSUsports.tv.
COMMENTS FROM LSU COACH NICK SABAN AT MONDAY PRESS LUNCHEON
“I know everyone wants to make this out to be the biggest game of the year, but I don’t mean to disappoint you. How would it look if we won this game, and then we lost to Mississippi St.? Every game is an important game, this is big game because it the game we play this week. They are a good team, they are a ranked team, and we are a ranked team, but it is just that it is early in the season. The focus needs to be on every player getting better, and every player getting better than the guy he has to play against each and every week. After looking at the film, I actually thought we played a little bit better than the way I felt after the game. The problems were: the turnovers in the red-zone, and then we had problems on a missed field goal and a bad snap, the onside kick, and giving up a few big plays on defense. Other than that our team played a little bit better than what I thought that we played in the game.”
“Michael Clayton was outstanding, even though Matt Mauck and Shyrone Carey were the players of the week. Certainly, what is good for us is to see Matt Mauck win the game as quarterback, and do things that we needed him to do on the offense for us to have success. Shyrone Carey had an outstanding game; he was one of our other offensive players of the week. I think on defense Chad Lavalais was outstanding; tackles for losses, pressures on the quarterback, lots of tackles, very active in the way he played. Corey Webster had a couple of pass break ups and a couple interceptions. Travis Daniels also blocked a punt, and is special teams player of the week. That game is something we use to get our players to be better, and understand the things that they need to do to improve as a team. Hopefully the meeting we had this morning, and the practice we have today we will do that. Georgia is a very good football team, and a nationally recognized program. What we try to prove now is that we try to be a contending, dominate team in our conference. We have a very competitive conference with a lot of good teams, and this one of those good teams.”
“This is the kind of game that we want to be involved in. That is how we will look at it, and that is what I am looking forward to this week. We have a couple players who will be out of practice today: Michael Clayton has a slightly sprained ankle and should be back tomorrow, Kirston Pittman with an MCL is questionable at best, and Ben Wilkerson also has a sprained ankle who probably practice tomorrow. Georgia has a lot of good football players, David Greene has the best completion percentage probably at quarterback in our league, and certainly and probably one of the best overall quarterbacks in the country in terms of game management, making good choices and decisions, and accuracy. They also surround him with a lot of good skill players. Even though one guy might be out, there always seems to be another guy to step up and take his place. Defensively they only give up about 5.7 point a game. They have a really good secondary all the way around, and they have great team speed. This is a very good football team, which makes this an opportunity and challenge for our football team.”
On Georgia QB David Greene
“He is one of the best quarterbacks in the country, and probably the best quarterbacks in the SEC. He makes good choices and decisions; they only have one turnover all year. He is very active throwing the ball, and he doesn’t make a lot of bad plays. He runs a lot of check with me, the no huddle, and he makes a lot of decisions based on how the defense lines up. He does an outstanding job for their team. Teams that went against their receivers in soft coverage were really paying for it. I think the key in the game is how we affect him by coverage and rushing, but they are just not a passing team. They can run the ball if you don’t line up to stop them”