HAMMOND – The Southeastern Louisiana University football team continued its preparations for its season opener at Tulane, working on installing its game plan with a 90-minute workout on Wednesday.
The game, which is slated for a 2:30 p.m. kickoff in the Louisiana Superdome, will mark the fourth meeting between the schools since 2005 with Tulane winning the previous three contests by 7, 8 and 6 points.
The series, which began in 1949, was revived in 2005 with Tulane posting a 28-21 victory at LSU's Tiger Stadium. The schools met two years later in New Orleans with former Tulane standout and current Chicago Bear running back Matt Forte rushing for 303 yards and five touchdowns in a 35-27 victory.
Southeastern will wrap up preparations for Saturday's contest with a Thursday afternoon practice. Several positions on the Lions' two-deep roster are still up for grabs, including at quarterback where juniors
Brian Young and
Nathan Stanley are both expected to play.
“We still have some position battles that are going on where we're going to play a couple of guys and split the reps and see how certain game situations effects those battles,” Lucas said during his first weekly press conference of the season on Tuesday. “I think we're ready, the kids have had a good camp and we're just polishing up a few things before we head down there Saturday morning.”
One area that the Lions want to improve on from last year's game is limiting turnovers and its kicking game. Southeastern committed four turnovers and had a shanked punt that led to 17 points and helped Tulane to a 27-21 victory.
“We've got to take better care of the football,” Lucas said. “When you look at our game down there from last year, we didn't take care of the football and turned it over in critical situations. We punted the ball poorly, gave up some field position and then we returned the ball poorly when a couple of punts they hit, we didn't catch and its hits and rolls and makes a 20-yard difference in field position. We've got to play more soundly in the kicking game.”
