Along with crowded roads and scorching hot weather comes one thing people usually do not mind at the beginning of every fall semester – the start of football season.
LSU fans will get their first chance to decide how good the Tigers will be in 2003 when LSU hosts the University of Louisiana at Monroe Saturday at 7 p.m. in Tiger Stadium.
The meeting will be the first between the two schools and is the season opener for both teams.
LSU coach Nick Saban said it is definitely time for the Tigers to match up against someone else and see what the outcome is.
“We have been talking about this it seems like for a long time,” Saban said. “Practice has gone fairly well this week. I think the team is tired of practicing, and I am tired of them practicing. I think everybody is ready to play a game, and a lot of questions will be answered about a lot of things when we play the game.”
One of those questions will be if starting quarterback Matt Mauck’s right foot is completely recovered from surgery repairing ligament damage suffered in last year’s 36-7 rout of Florida in The Swamp.
Saban and company have said all along Mauck is 100 percent and suffers no lingering effects from the surgery.
LSU’s defense also will be tested. They will face a ULM offense with eight returning starters and numerous weapons.
“I think the most impressive thing about this team is the quarterback is a very good player,” Saban said. “He threw for a lot of yards last year and a lot of touchdowns. He threw for 470 yards in one game. They have a lot of good skill players on offense and basically that is what they try to beat you with. They try to spread you out and use their skill players to make plays.”
The aforementioned quarterback is sophomore Steven Jyles of Glen Oaks High School. Jyles threw for 2,318 yards and 17 touchdowns as a freshman, and was named the 2002 Louisiana Offensive Freshman of the Year.
Jyles also has his leading receiver back in senior Mack Vincent, who caught 79 passes for 1,198 yards in 2003.
“Steven Jyles and Mack Vincent are both good players and are improving daily,” said ULM head coach Charlie Weatherbie. “As they continue to improve, they will be real exciting.”
Defensively may be where the Indians struggle the most.
They allowed 37.7 points-per-game last year, and gave up 195.7 yards-per-game on the ground.
Linebacker Maurice Sonnier does return after missing over half of last season last year with a broken ankle.
He was the 2002 Sun Belt Preseason Defensive Player of the Year before the injury and named to the Lombardie Award Watch List for this year.
The heavily favored Tigers will have to guard against overlooking the Indians and looking forward to next weekend’s road trip to Arizona, but safety Travis Daniels said that should not be a problem.
“ULM is a real dangerous team,” Daniels said. “They have a real good quarterback and some good receivers, and with their no-huddle offense and the pace of the game, they could easily sneak up on you. We have to go out there and play to the best of our ability, and if we do that, we should come out on top.”
Defensive end Marquise Hill said all the motivation he needs comes from the fourth quarter of last season’s Arkansas game, when the Razorbacks drove down the field in the last minute and scored a touchdown to deprive LSU of a chance to make a return trip to the Southeastern Conference Championship game.
“It makes you realize on any given day you can get beat,” Hill said. “From a defensive perspective, we are not going to take them lightly. We are going to take every game serious, because that fourth quarter of the Arkansas game shows you what can happen when you get lackadaisical.”