LSU football head coach LANE KIFFIN (photo courtesy of LSU Athletics)
LSU football coach Lane Kiffin says the Tigers will have to bounce back from an emotional 32-24 loss to Ole Miss. He says that after watching the film on Monday, the Tigers felt like they lost the game because of missed opportunities.
“Those are really hard ones you struggle with when you really go back and look and see how many ways that we came all the way back and should have won the game. So, it was tough on them. There are just some games you get outplayed, outcoached, and you go, ‘Okay, back to the drawing board.’ But that one they really struggled with this morning seeing,” Kiffin said.
Quarterback Sam Leavitt missed some open receivers that would have been critical touchdowns late in the game. Kiffin says he explained to the team how the early pass rush from the Rebels affected him as the game went on.
“Confidence is fragile at every position, but especially at quarterback, because it’s the one position where you’ve got to do your job with potentially getting hit from all over. A lot of the plays he was having success was taking off on his own and doing things; so it’s hard to stay in there when that’s how the game was going. But he knows he’s got to do a better job with that,” Kiffin explained.
Kiffin says the team was down about the loss initially and then was disheartened again when they saw how winnable the game was.
“Their emotions had probably gotten a little bit better; and then this morning, when they saw it, I think it went down. So I made sure, when we transitioned at 10 to the next opponent, I told them, ‘Hey, we’ve got to go out of here and regroup. We’ve got to move on. Because we can’t let that missed opportunity have to do with us losing another game,'” Kiffin noted.
LSU hosts 23rd-ranked Texas A&M on Saturday. Both teams are coming off losses in their SEC openers.
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