BATON ROUGE — LSU soccer head coach Brian Lee, along with members of his team and coaching staff, met with the media at Walk-On’s Bistreaux on Tuesday to discuss the team’s progress during fall camp and what they expect to accomplish in the 2006 season.
Use the link above for archived video from the press conference in the Geaux Zone powered by USAgencies.
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Comments from soccer head coach Brian Lee from LSU Soccer Media Day
Opening Statement…
“Thanks for having us here. Thanks for everyone coming out to echo Fran’s (Flory) comment about the turnout. It’s a big improvement from last year and a big step forward, and a lot of that has to do with volleyball now being in contention to win the SEC every year coming off their great ’05 season. The big picture for us this fall here in 2006 is we want to do the same. We want to double the size of this crowd next year because we’ll have two teams coming off SEC West or SEC championships.”
“Preseason camp has gone as well as it possibly could for us. We’re healthy. The kids showed up fit. We’ve settled on a playing rotation going into Friday night’s opener with SMU where we’ll play probably 14 kids. We feel very comfortable despite being young. Of those 14, nine are freshmen, four are sophomores and there’s one senior. We’ll play an SMU team that will start the same team that lost in the Round of 32 in the NCAA Tournament this past year. So, we think it’s a great challenge right off the bat. On another note, Caroline Vanderpool will make that group of players 15 when she returns from the Women’s World Cup being held in Russia right now. That will be sometime either this weekend or as late as Sept. 5, depending on how Canada does in their game on Wednesday against China and then in the quarterfinals, semifinals and finals from there.”
“After the SMU game, we head into a three game home stand where we’ll play UL-Lafayette on the Tuesday, Sam Houston on the Friday and Houston following that on a Sunday. We’re looking forward to a great home environment this year. Last year, we set a single game record of 1,700 approximately at a home game, which almost doubled the previous high. We think the team’s better. We think it will be a more attractive style of soccer to watch. It’s young. The kids are exciting. For those of you who have only seen soccer locally, I think you’re in for a tremendous new treat in terms of how aesthetically pleasing the game can be whether we win or lose. And we hope everyone will continue to come out and support it through the course of the fall.”
“Along the lines of the schedule, later in the season you’ll see Texas at home, who is currently ranked 15th in the country. We’ve got Florida coming here to Baton Rouge, who is in the top 15 and Vanderbilt who is in the top 20. Six of our 20 opponents are currently in a top 25 here in the preseason. There’s a seventh and an eighth. SMU has been to five straight NCAA Tournaments and Villanova rarely misses the tournament, and we’ve got them on the slate as well, so we’ll certainly be tested.”
“In conclusion, 20 months ago when we took this job and if you’d have asked me how I would feel on this day on Aug. 22 leading into the 2006 season, if I felt this good about the status of our program and the level of the players we’ve got involved, I might have said you are crazy. We will be young, but it’s a young, talented group. It’s a group of great people, and certainly we feel like if you have a talented kids who are fit, which they are, and who are good people on top of it, good things happen to good people and you’ll win. So, we’re setting our goals high this fall. We think we can compete to win the overall SEC championship. We certainly think we can compete to win the SEC West. We think we have an NCAA caliber roster, and now we have to go out and win the games in behind it. We’re just excited about the fall getting started and we look forward to Friday night.”
On the team’s young back line…
“That’s very likely (to see freshmen start). We’ve kind of settled on a back line to start the game, and it’ll include three freshmen and a sophomore transfer who wasn’t with us last year either. You’re looking at Brittany Lowe, who is out of Houston, Texas, Nikki Bush from Clinton, Miss., Chelsea Potts from Chicago and Casey Crawford who’s out of Mandeville that’s a transfer from the University of Tennessee. A big key for us is Jackie Moseley will be behind them. She’s a sophomore. They will certainly be tested Friday night, probably the best front line we’ll see all fall I’d say. They’re fast, athletic, seasoned, all juniors and seniors, so it will be a great test for our back line.”
On what he expects out of the freshman class this season…
“I will be able to give you a much better answer in two weeks. They are actually better than I thought they’d be at this stage. They were a pleasant surprise, and that’s saying something for a class ranked seventh in the country. They’re talented. They’re good. I think they need a year in the LSU support system as they get comfortable with class, their strength and conditioning and all those kind of things. They are actually a little better than I thought they would be. We’ll be relying on them all to mesh with the upperclassmen as well. I think it’s going to make our upperclassmen better players. Joleen Phillips, one of our senior captains, it’s got to be a joy to play with these kids. Melissa Clarke, who’s a sophomore for us and I think has All-American potential, after the first practice she came over and said, ?Wow, this is awesome.’ And it is. It’s a joy to watch. When we’re out at practice and we divide up and play 6 v 6, the coaches can sit back and it’s enjoyable to watch. It’s a talented group.”
On the formation the team will play this season…
“Systematically, we’re kind of married to pass and move, pass and move. It’s one of our big phrases we use with the kids. We’re not married to a formation. What we’ll do is set them in a formation that we think that day or that half gives them the best chance to win that game. So, I think in the first three games you might see three different formations, but you will see an organized defense and in front of them a fluid, attractive, attacking team that passes the ball and gets to the end line and crosses and scores real goals. We want there to be a reason we win. We want to be the better team at the end of the game. It’s one of our core philosophies. We want to deserve to win on the practice field, in the classroom, how we act around town. We think all those things roll into being successful.”
On competing in the SEC with such a young team…
“In terms of the young kids coming into the SEC, most of them have played at a higher level than the SEC. Most of them have played in international games. They’ve toured Europe playing with national teams. They’ve played for regional or youth national teams here in the states. From a preparation standpoint, they should be there. I think the bigger thing is playing 20 games in 60 days, which is too many for soccer but it’s the way the college season works. Can they focus on the next game? Can they always be prepared? We’ll certainly have moments of brilliance, and we’re expecting to have lulls. As a coaching staff, we have to do the best job we can to get them to focus on the next game and to kind of clearing everything else out of their mind. In terms of level of competition, most of them have experienced it before if not at a higher level than college soccer.”
On scoring more goals in 2006…
“I think we’ll be much more balanced. I think goals will come from the midfield just as much as they will up front. Time of possession is probably a big one for us, and the key really is time of possession on their end of the field. I think you’ll see those numbers go up. Everyone will be involved. You’re just as likely to see the winning goal come from our right sided midfield players as our forwards like Joleen (Phillips). At the end of the year, I think you’ll turn around and you’ll see four, five, six kids with somewhere around five or six goals.”