Southeastern Louisiana at Tulane Preview

Tulane (0-2) got its first home game in Uptown out of the way last Saturday in the kickoff at Yulman Stadium. They will notch another first this week when the Southeastern Louisiana Lions (2-0), ranked #3 in FCS, come to town to face the Green Wave.

I wanted to do a "Know Your Enemy" preview piece with a Lions expert, and here is my Q&A with RL from the Lions Den forum. Check him out on Twitter @royalLion05 too. 

Tulane Head Coach Curtis Johnson called SELA the toughest team on Tulane's schedule. Do you think that is deserved, or was CJ just hyping this game up?

As for Curtis Johnson's comments ... I believe he said an NFL scout told him that, and was essentially repeating it. Not sure those are his thoughts but the fact that he brought it up when he did, leads me to believe he has respect for our program. But we hear "coachspeak" all the time ... it's part of it. As for whether I feel it's deserved? We're an FCS program with 63 scholarships, the AAC is a solid FBS conference with 85 scholarships ... I'll leave it at that.

Green Wave fans are familiar with how well SELA did with big-time transfers, including Jordan Batiste, who led the team in sacks last year. Who do you see as the big-time players for the Lions this week to watch out for?

We do have a number of FBS transfers, including Bennett, but also have a solid core of kids signed out of high school who are impact guys for us. Harlan Miller, Xavier Roberson, Chris Malott, Marice Sutton, Drew Misita, Kaleb Muse, Tyler Stoddard and Rasheed Harrell to name a few.

As far who to to look out for this weekend? Obviously Bennett, along with Xavier Roberson, Devante Scott, Jeff Smiley, Rasheed Harrell and Chris Malott on offense. Defensively, our top guys are Harlan Miller, Isiah Corbett, Jacob Newman, Drew Misita, Marice Sutton, Jordan Batiste, Micah Eugene ... I could pretty much name them all, we've got a lot of depth.

QB Bryan Bennett had a nice week against Southern Utah last game. Tulane is noted for its strong secondary and ball hawks like Lorenzo Doss. How do you anticipate the Lions will handle that passing defense.

Actually Bennett didn't have one of his better nights vs Southern Utah, though still managed to put up over 300 yards of total offense, and made big plays when he had to. As for facing Tulane's secondary ... I'm sure we'll handle it the same we approach practice everyday vs our own secondary. Anytime you have to go against Harlan Miller, Derrick Raymond, Batiste, Eugene, Stoddard and Sutton on a daily basis, you're pretty well battle tested.