All right, good to sit down with Ali Gay, LSU defensive lineman.

Ali, thank you for your time today, man.

Appreciate it.

You're the big man on campus this week.

How does it feel to have your LSU debut go as well as yours did? I'll throw a stat out there to

start things off. You had 11 pressures. It's the most by any LSU player since 2015. So you came

out the gates really hot. I mean, what do you make of your first game? What's the reaction been

with your teammates, your family, your friends?

I mean, just the preparation is coming in the game. I've been here since January, you know, coming in, I knew that I had to come out and just, you know, make myself known right away. and even though with my class and you know coming from J, you know, I haven't been had that many success in a while.

So I had to just, you know, come out and just let everybody know that, you know, I'm here and I'm here to play.

And, you know, I'm ready to go.

Yeah, you definitely did that.

You definitely want to let everyone know.

I want to start with that coming to LSU. You talked about getting here in January. During this conversation, I want to go way back. I want to go back to your childhood and dig into some stuff. But I want to start with getting to LSU and winning a starting job. Because a couple weeks ago, Coach O announced that you were a starter. A lot of people were surprised. You didn't come in as a five-star guy. You didn't come in as a major recruit in the recruiting rankings. But for people inside this building, it wasn't a surprise because you've been performing since you got here. So tell me about getting here in January and you get a couple months under your belt and then a pandemic hits and everything shuts down.

You stayed, right? Coach, I talked about you stayed around. So just tell me about your mindset as

you get here, things go haywire, but then you stick around and you're putting in the work.

I mean, like I said, coming in January was, you know, everybody had to, you know, coming here, you don't just, you know, you're not just giving anything. You got to earn it. So when I got here, coach told me, you know, everything, you know, I would have to work to get it. And they didn't, you know, through the recruiting process and all, they didn't. Everything they told me was, you know, what I actually happened when I got here, which was I had to work, you know,

to get what I wanted. So, and coach always preach, you know, the depth chart is as insane.

So, you know, nothing is promised and everything you're going to have to work for it to get it.

And that's what I did ever since I came here and just being around everybody and being

around the people who were in the national

championship team last year, you know, it motivated me to work even harder and push myself

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