Mike Norvell addresses how week one win prepared team for LSU

Florida State breezed past Duquesne 47-7 in the Seminoles Week 0 season opener, and are set to take on LSU this coming Saturday in the Tigers’ backyard of New Orleans. Seminoles head coach Mike Norvell and his squad are looking to play spoiler during the highly-anticipated debut of new LSU headman Brian Kelly.

One way FSU has earned a leg up on the Tigers lies in the fact that its regular season began a full week before LSU’s did, as the game this coming Saturday will serve as the season opener for LSU.

“Anytime you get experience, I think it helps,” Norvell said. “This was the first time that our team, this team, got a chance to take the field together. You’re always going to have new faces. There’s a lot of true freshmen that played, transfers, returning players that came out and plays better than they played, and that’s a good thing to see.

“So we’ll take the experience that we had tonight, and we’ve got to build upon it. We get an extra day leading up to Sunday night kick versus LSU, so we need every one of those moments from film watching to on-the-field practice to prepare and improve so that we are our best come next Sunday night because that’s still always going to be the standard. It’s not about who we’re playing. It’s about us. It’s about that constant growth.”

CLICK HERE to subscribe for FREE to the On3 YouTube channel

In terms of the stat sheet, Florida State was unstoppable Saturday. Three separate players compiled more than 100 yards on the ground on Saturday. Treshaun Ward (14 rushes, 127 yards, 2 TD), Trey Benson (11 rushes, 105 yards, 1 TD) and Lawrence Toafili (13 rushes, 101 yards, 1 TD) all staked their claim as regular fixtures of the FSU running back room.

Quarterback Jordan Travis also showed improvements in year two as the Seminoles’ starter, completing 11 of 15 passes for 207 yards. Additionally, he rushed the ball four times for eleven yards and a touchdown. All of which Norvell believes is valuable for this Saturday’s huge matchup.

“It’s going to be a great challenge. It’s going to be a great opportunity, being a national showcase game,” Norvell said about the matchup. “Probably won’t need a whole lot of motivational speeches next week, but the focus is on us. It has to be on our growth. That’s where I thought our guys did a nice job, especially with Week [0].

“You have a game like that behind you, and that’s what everybody wants to talk about, what media wants to talk about is the LSU game. Well, tonight mattered. Tonight mattered. What we did, the way our guys played, it was important because it’s still about us. I appreciate the work and the focus that our guys had on this plan and the opportunity that we got in front of our home crowd.”