During his weekly Monday press conference luncheon, coach Nick Saban pointed out the biggest thing sophomore left tackle Andrew Whitworth has done. He said Whitworth has played with consistency.
Whitworth, a 6-foot-7, 325-pound West Monroe, La. native, has been solid this season, garnering one of the LSU offensive player of the week honors for the Georgia, Florida and Auburn games.
One of the keys to the Tigers’ success has been studying tapes of former LSU offensive line great Alan Faneca, who currently plays for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
“We talk about the intensity he played with,” Whitworth said.
Whitworth said he has been playing with the right mental mindset so far this year.
“I think the big thing I’ve done and the most successful part of my game [has been] eliminating mental errors,” he said.
One of the goals of the line, according to Whitworth, was to establish a push against a solid Auburn front seven.
“Overall, we just turn on that mindset,” he said. “The goal was to hit people in the mouth. It’s something that we slacked off with in the Florida game.”
Put your hands up!
Junior defensive end Marquise Hill said there are only a few changes when playing a team like Louisiana Tech versus running teams such as South Carolina and Auburn.
“We have to get our hands up and pressure the quarterback,” Hill said. “That’s the only difference.”
Playing a pass-happy team like La. Tech can make Saturday night a tiring one for a pass rusher.
“In a way it’s a good thing, in a way it’s a bad thing,” Hill said. “We’re going to try to crash the pocket.”
Professor Saban
Saban’s specialty has always been in the defensive backfield. The soon to be 52-year-old coach played defensive back for three years at Kent State University.
Among those continuing to learn from Saban is junior cornerback/safety Travis Daniels who likens learning the Saban system to another class.
“You learn a lot of techniques,” Daniels said. “It’s like another class that takes you four years with the same professor.”
Daniels said he has enjoyed playing for Saban.
“Coach Saban is a really great coach,” he said. “He knows how to get players involved in game.”
Eastern Controversy
Things may not be as cut and dry in terms of the Southeastern Conference’s Eastern Division title race.
If Florida beats Georgia this weekend, things could get sticky as Florida, Georgia and Tennessee could all end up in a three-way tie at the end of the year.
No problem, you say, because a tiebreaker would sort this out. But the tie would go all the way to the seventh tiebreaker, which constitutes a vote of the SEC institutions who are not involved in the tie.
“What would be a better way to do it would be my question,” Saban said. “[The media] likes to speculate on things like that; I don’t. We ‘might’ get three more running backs hurt this week in practice, so what would we do in the game? I really have enough problems without worrying about what ‘might’ happen. What, do we all have four more games? It ‘might’ not end up in a three-way tie.”
Saban continued, saying he does not know any other tiebreaker that would work out.
“I think if you run through the tie-breaking procedure that we have, it’s fair,” he said. “In tie-breaking situations you have to make some arbitrary decision as to who’s going to go represent because you’re out of competitive balance things to look at.”
Up in Smoke Part II
Saban jokingly presented two members of the media with cigars as a special present from a special someone who is beloved in the Baton Rouge area (joke).
“My good friend [Auburn coach] Thomas Tuberville wanted me to give the two media guys that picked Auburn to win the game cigars,” he said.
Tuberville, in his first year as coach at Auburn, smoked cigars with his players after Auburn smoked LSU on the field 41-7 in 1999. In 2001, LSU fans smoked cigars shortly before the end of LSU’s Western Division winning victory over the War Eagles.
Punts
Crowd noise measured at a high of 117 decibels, according to the LSU Physics and Astronomy Department. This ties a mark set in 1996 for the LSU-Alabama game and is seven decibels higher than what a rock concert is measured. A jet engine gives off 130 decibels of sound … Don’t tell Auburn running back Brandon Jacobs about the noise reading. Prior to last weekend’s game, Jacobs, a junior, had said Auburn’s Jordan-Hare Stadium was louder than Tiger Stadium. Jacobs ended Saturday’s contest with one rush for three yards.
LSU owns the series over La. Tech by a 15-1 mark. In those games, Tech has scored a combined 22 points and been shut out 12 times. The Bulldogs’ only win came in 1904 when they beat the Tigers 6-0 in Ruston.