BATON ROUGE — LSU Head Football Coach Nick Saban addressed the media on Monday afternoon in the LSU Athletics Administration Building before Saturday’s game against Mississippi State. Archived video is now available for members of LSUsports.tv.
COMMENTS FROM LSU COACH NICK SABAN AT HIS WEEKLY PRESS CONFERENCE
“After watching the film I think that what I said after the game is probably still pretty true today. We competed extremely well in the game, played hard, and played with a lot of toughness. We never hung our head anytime relative to any circumstance or situation. The defense had a lot of tough situations in the first half with bad field positions. Our offense had some tough circumstances late in the game and overcame it and made plays when they had to. I think that above all that I say I want you to know that I respect our players a tremendous amount for doing that. Even though the effort was good and the toughness was good, and the competitive attitude was excellent, the execution was not always what you would like for it to be relative to how we have played in the past.”
“Obviously they (Georgia) are a good football team so they contribute to that to some degree, but when you drop balls, don’t run the routes the right way, don’t read the coverages right, bust on defense and don’t play them right due to lack of communication or whatever, you feel like there are a lot of things that you need to fix or work on to improve. So, we feel very fortunate and very good about the fact that we beat a good football team, but we don’t necessarily feel like we had our “A” game the whole time in doing it in terms of how we executed. I think that our commitment to improving and fixing those things and using this game as experience and an opportunity to get better is going to be a real key to the future of this team.”
“You can look at history and you can look at big wins, you can look at a lot of things and there are two things that can happen. You can be relieved by the fact that you just won a big game so now you say ‘Hey we just won a big game so now we can relax and take it easy and we don’t have to work as hard to practice and prepare as well for the team we play this week or any of that stuff. That happened after we beat Tennessee here three years ago. We got thumped the next week and then went and won at Kentucky. The most important thing is that players focus and concentrate and have a conviction and commitment toward doing the things that we need to do to get better. Like I have talked about before, you have to have a high standard of expectation to be able to continue to do that when good things happen or sometimes you get a little relieved. It is that same old make an A on the test at midterm and quit going to class for two weeks. That is going to be a real key for us.”
“The players of the week, Corey Webster was obviously SEC Player of the Week, was also player of the week for us as well as Chad Lavalais. (Lavalais) did an excellent job of pushing and pressuring. (Andrew) Whitworth and Eric Edwards on offense both had outstanding games and Justin Vincent was the outstanding special teams player.”
“The injuries, (defensive end) Marquise Hill and (linebacker) Adrian Mayes will both be out of practice today. Marquise has a twisted ankle, which he played with in the game. Adrian Mayes has a sprained wrist. Eric Alexander and Michael Clayton will probably be in red jerseys (non-contact). Eric Alexander has an AC sprain and Michael Clayton has a bruised thigh, which he played with through the game.”
“Mississippi State is a team that certainly needs to be respected. Their offensive team has put up almost 33 points a game and over 450 yards of offense a game. Kevin Fant has thrown for almost 300 yards a game. They have excellent running backs and outstanding skill people. They make a lot of big plays in games and I think they are a pretty good offensive football team. I think Morris Watts, who is an old friend of mine and a guy that I coached with has done an excellent job of helping their offense and they are good on offense. Defensively they have six freshman or sophomores starting out of 11 guys. They are young on defense and I am sure are going to make improvement as young players do as the season goes on.”
“They are very good on special teams. They have good team speed and good return guys and some of those same guys are the skill players on offense. They will be challenging to us in all those areas. To me, I know it is not to you, but this game is really more important than last week’s game because it is the game that we play this week but it is also a game that we play in our division. When you don’t have success sin your division you don’t get those games back. I think it is a real critical game for us as a team to be able to show some improvement and be able to compete at a high level on the road against what is a very explosive offensive team and a team that has potential to beat anybody.”
“I can sit here an give you the scenarios that happen every week. I think Toledo beat Pitt and Marshall beat Kansas State, Northern Illinois beat Alabama. So even though everybody likes to just assume things that it not the way it is. That is not the way it is in college football every week and it is not the way that it is in our league and I think everybody needs to understand that including our players.”