Western Illinois will come into Tiger Stadium on Saturday as the No. 1 team in I-AA, but at Wednesday’s press conference LSU coach Nick Saban said he is most concerned with his team’s performance – not rankings.
“We’re concerned about how we play,” Saban said. “I’m not worried about evaluating the other team. Everybody has good players and if you don’t play well you put yourself in the position to get beat.”
Saban said the key to playing with consistency is respecting each opponent and striving for excellence in each game. Saban compared the college football season to mountain climbing.
“I think it starts with the idea of knowing that we’re climbing a mountain,” Saban said. “We’re probably somewhere around base camp and we’ve got a long way to go.”
LSU outscored its first two opponents by an average margin of 44 points. Saban said those performances fail to explain where the Tigers will be at the end of the season. He said no one can tell from the first two weeks whether any college football team is a powerhouse.
“I don’t think you really know who the good football teams are right now,” Saban said. “I don’t think you can really tell who the best football teams in the SEC are going to be right now. And just because a team’s lost two games or won two games doesn’t mean that that’s how it’s going to end up.”
“Some teams are up and down. Some teams can play with consistency. I think all those things still remain to be seen by every team.”
Not playing your best and still winning a ball game can be detrimental to playing with consistency, Saban said. He eluded to the “Bluegrass Miracle” at Kentucky last season when LSU won the game but failed to play up to its potential.
“The good news is you won the game, but the bad news is you didn’t play very well and the players still won,” Saban said. “It’s a lot more difficult to get them to focus and have the kind of attention to detail you need to make the improvements you need relative to how you perform and how you competed in the game.”
Saban said it will take time to know whether the Tigers’ pre-Southeastern Conference opponent schedule will benefit the team. He said he hopes the Tigers are ready to play big-time SEC opponents. Saban said his main concern is that most of his starters have only seen 40 to 50 plays in a game instead of the normal 70 to 80 plays they will see in a SEC contest.
“We’re going to see very good competition when we start playing in our league and throughout all the teams we play in our league,” Saban said. “I haven’t identified a bad team in our league yet. It’s going to be a long haul and only time will tell if this preseason has helped us or hurt us in terms of our preparation of playing down the road.”
The Tigers have one more game before the SEC slate that starts a week from Saturday with No. 8 Georgia. Saban said playing on a dry field is to LSU’s advantage, but the Tigers will be ready to play in any situation come rain, snow, sleet or sun.
“I don’t prefer to play on a dry track,” Saban said. “I said that it would be to our advantage to play on a dry track. There’s a difference in that. I don’t care where we play. We’ll play out in the damn parking lot if they want to play out there.”