Joe Alleva cautions fans for patience as Ed Orgeron handles ‘roster management’
By Keith Farner
Published:
Joe Alleva spent part of the LSU football bye week on Tuesday speaking at the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation Quarterback Club where he offered a state of the program of sorts breakdown of the program.
The Advocate reported that Alleva covered several topics during a 15-minute question-and-answer segment with the audience. The LSU football team is on a three-game winning streak following losses to Mississippi State and Troy. The Tigers are ranked No. 23 and are 6-2 ahead of next week’s game at undefeated No. 1 Alabama.
“He’s going to lead us to great things, but people just have to be a little bit patient,” Alleva said of Orgeron. “He’s got some recruiting to do and I know he’s going to be able to recruit and fill in the gaps.”
Part of the patience is related to LSU playing several freshmen, including two that start on the offensive, and five that rotate on defense.
“A real focus for Ed and our team in the future is roster management,” Alleva said. “One of the things we knew was a problem coming in to this year was the fact we had a lot of young kids that had to play because of various reasons. Had attrition, recruiting gaps that we had to play a lot of true freshmen. We have two true freshmen playing on the offensive line. That’s very hard.
Alleva has reportedly watched film with Orgeron, and joked at the event that he didn’t have time this week to do that again.
“We went through a couple of rough games, but to Coach O’s credit, he righted the ship. Coaches with tremendous enthusiasm. The future is very bright for our program at LSU. We have 20 true freshmen playing,” Alleva said.
A former newspaper veteran, Keith Farner is a news manager for Saturday Down South.
