BATON ROUGE — LSU head football coach Nick Saban addressed members of the media at his weekly luncheon held Monday afternoon in the fifth floor conference room of the LSU Athletic Administration Building.
On the Mississippi State game…
“We were pleased with the effort that the players played with, the toughness, the way they responded from a competitive spirit standpoint relative to what our team needed to do. We try to do things the way we want to do them here the LSU way.”
“There were some things that execution wise that we need to improve on. I think that’s probably going to be the case most of the time. Some of the things that we need to improve on, especially things like turnovers; maybe a few too many penalties that could get us in trouble down the road, especially the undisciplined-type penalties. I think we had five illegal procedure penalties on offense. Every one of the fumbles were easily corrected and things that are fundamental errors in either how you carry the ball, how you take the ball from the quarterback. Two of them (fumbles) were how you carry the ball, but are all things that can be corrected. We’re working hard to teach our players to try to continue to improve from that standpoint.”
On LSU’s injury situation…
“We’re probably in a little better shape than we were a week ago, we’ll have three guys in red shirts (non-contact) today — Craig Davis, Skyler Green and Jason Spadoni. My thoughts about Skyler Green are is if I see Skyler Green in practice this week as a guy that is confident, comfortable and not worried about his ankle then he should be ready to play. That’s basically what I’ve told him, and that’s basically what we want for him so that when he goes in the game, he has confidence. I think it’s not an issue of the injury now, I think it’s psychologically more developing some confidence that he can stick his foot in the ground, cut, change direction and do the things that are important for him to play well. We could have played him in the last game, and we just chose not to play him in the game.”
On LSU’s Players of the Week from the Mississippi State game….
“Alley Broussard and Marcus Randall both did an outstanding job in the game on offense. Corey Webster, obviously for the plays that he made in the game, but also Marcus Spears played very well and was a playmaker in the game. On special teams, Kenny Hollis and Ali Highsmith both did an outstanding job.”
On the game against Georgia….
“The game we have this week at Georgia, and they’re a very very good football team, I don’t think anybody has any questions about that, and they are good in every area of their team. Offensively, they score a lot of points. They’ve got a very experienced, good quarterback who does a great job of throwing the ball, is smart in terms of what plays he gets them in and out of, executes extremely well for them and doesn’t make a lot of mistakes.”
“They have a lot of balance on offense; they have the ability to run the ball. The running back that played very well in the first game will be back for our game, and I think he is a very good player. They have good skill guys outside who can make plays. So, they have balance running it, throwing it and they mix it up a lot and do a nice job of play action. This is a very diverse, well-defined offense that’s going to be a real challenge for us to defend.”
“Defensively, as always, they are very physical and aggressive. They’ve got very good players that play hard, they run well. Their secondary is big and physical. They are really kind of a zone team, and they break on the ball well and cover a lot of ground out there. They’ve got guys like (David) Pollack who is a real playmaker, always has been, and he always seems to come up with a big play at the right time for them.
“There are very sound, solid, good skill guys on special teams, good team speed. So, they’re also very good in that area.”
“I think the most important thing for our team is, whether we’re admitting that we were pleased with the way the players respond to the challenge of competing in the last game, now the challenge is can you compete that way for 60 minutes on the road and not be affected in somebody else’s house about how you play. That is something that we have not done, and that’s something that is going to be a challenge for us to do against a very good football team. That’s the way we’re going to focus it, and that’s the way we’re going to try to do it.”
“The emphasis still is on our team getting better and our team playing well and our team going out to beat the other team. That’s really what we’re going to try to focus on and try to do in this game in the way we compete effort wise, toughness wise, the intangibles we play with from a relentless competitive spirit standpoint and also on execution. So, those are the three areas that we are going to continue to emphasize to see this team grow and develop.”