Mike Leach reveals how he plans to prepare his team for late start against Arizona in Week 2

Mike Leach and his Mississippi State team head to the west coast this week to take on Arizona in a game that’ll kick off at 11 p.m eastern time. The lateness of the game with the time change definitely calls for some adjustment, and Leach spoke about how he plans to prepare his team for Saturday’s late-night matchup.

“You know the biggest thing is you just get them up late, you get there and go to the movie, make curfew a little later, move breakfast up and then get them up later,” Leach said. “Which it’s not too unusual for college students to need more sleep anyway, whether they think they do or not. And then just sequence the meetings in a later fashion and go play.”

There will definitely be a lot of moving parts to the adjustment from a meetings and scheduling standpoint, but Leach believes the key and most important thing is players getting their rest.

CLICK HERE to subscribe for FREE to the On3 YouTube channel

“This one will be kind of unusually late for us, because what is it 10 p.m. or something like that, but yeah you just sequence everything later and try to fill the time. Stagger out the meetings and that sort of thing, but one of the biggest things is try to wake them up later,” Leach said.

Leach is no stranger to playing in the west coach, as he spent eight seasons coaching in the Pac-12 for Washington State before his tenure with the Bulldogs, as he also detailed his weather expectations for Saturday’s game.

“I don’t really think the heat will, but I think you want to stay hydrated, it’s a drier thing,” Leach expained. “So I think stay hydrated, I haven’t noticed a big difference, and then plus it’s at night in the desert cools off at night, people don’t fully realize how much cooler a desert gets at night than it does here for example.”

The Bulldogs are no stranger to the heat, as temperatures will reach a high of 90 degrees this month in Starkville. Leach believes that hydration and all the other outside factors are important, but at the end of the day the main focus needs to simply be to play and win the game.

“So it’ll be cooled some and we’re a hard team to heat out in anyways so gotta make sure we drink a lot. And then just go play the game, I mean the biggest thing is none of those things need to be distractions, just focus on what we do because we’ll do it anyways,” Leach said.