Postgame LSU Quotes

Here are some quotes from the press conference. Feel free to comment with your own thoughts.

LSU coach Les Miles:

General Comments:

"Give credit to our opponents, they played hard.We certainly made our share of mistakes, but any time you take a game and you change the intensity 10 degrees, things happen that shouldn't. If you want to say we came out flat...I think that's it, especially on the offensive side. Our defense played well the entire game. The good news is, when a team, caught not playing its best football turns and gets it in gear and does the things we're supposed to do, that's the way it's supposed to finish. It wasn't our best game, but I take victory."

On Tulane's defensive line versus LSU's offensive line:

"It's one of those things. I think [the Tigers' offensive was]... playing extremely well going into this game, and I think they took for granted that they could block these guys. You don't take that for granted, not in major college football. I think they certainly stuttered -- did not look like a finely-tuned group, but I think they played well in the back half of the game."

On if they saw Tulane's first-half showing coming:

"I didn't see any warning. You can link a lot of things together that may not be true at all, so what spend that time? The issue is it was a little flat start, [the LSU players] understood they were going to have to play, and played well. Thank goodness the defense played well [the whole game].

On what he told his players at halftime:

"Basically [I told them] we shot ourselves in the foot, we came here and played like we didn't have intentions or purpose. I said: Second half, let's do what we came here to do, let's play like we play, let's understand...let's take the opening kickoff [of the second half] and score, let's set the tone for this game like we should have from the opening drive in the first half. But we waited a half."

On...athletics?

It's a wonderful thing about athletics. You have to play to win. You can't go out there and say 'you guys know what the score is going to be and we know what the score is going to be, so let's arrange it.' No, you gotta play, and you gotta play hard. I credit Tulane for that, that's what you came to do. You came to play hard to win. Eventually, we had to do that. Second half -- it appeared to me we did that.

On all the sacks:

I didn't see any coverage sacks. It's hard for me to tell you. I -- I -- unusual play by the offensive line got us off track

On the play of freshman Chad Jones and punt returning (note: wasn't asked about Trindon Holliday at all -- brought it up himself):

"Trindon Holliday came in there...I thought that was an unusual opportunity to catch a ball. It looked to me like the defense was in between his arms and ball, and I just kind of thought that somebody could have argued that there could have been a call there...."

LSU DB Craig Steltz:

On how Matt Forte compares to SEC running backs:

"He did a really good job -- he broke some runs, he broke a couple tackles there and made some plays. But the SEC -- that's a totally different conference.

LSU OL Herman Johnson:

On the first-half troubles for the LSU offensive line:

"First of all, they had a linebacker that was kind of spying on [the LSU offensive linemen]. If we turned our heads, he was going to blitz/ But if we kept our eye on hm, he wasn't going to blitz, so we worked on that and kind of picked it up in the second half.

On if Tulane was better prepared for the game than LSU:

"I thought we had a good week of practice. We just came in, and we just thought we didn't have to play our best game, and they kind of proved it to us that we needed to play, so we kind of stepped it up."


Johnson also told another reporter that there was a lot finger-pointing going on in the first half among the LSU players. Flynn says he didn't know about that.

LSU QB Matt Flynn:

On Tulane's defense:

"They came out and started playing well -- they were fired up, but as an offense we made too many mistakes. We made a lot of mental mistakes, and we just gotta look at the film and correct what we did wrong. But in the second half we came out and played a lot better."

On if the first half was a matter of Tulane playing well or LSU playing poorly:

"Like I said, they played very well, but each week we tell ourselves it's not about the other team. We feel like we left some stuff out there and made too many mental mistakes."

On if it was frustrating that Tulane's defensive line was hitting him virtually every play:

Like I said, they did some stuff to us that we weren't expecting, and they played very well. It was tough in the pocket back there -- they were hitting me, and they played well. But we found a way to make some plays.

On if the sacks were coverage sacks or not:

We have to check out the film -- I don't know.