[Buckskin86]

Barksdale makes quick impact on LSU offensive line
By Glenn Guilbeau
Louisiana Gannett News
gguilbeau@gannett.com

BATON ROUGE -- Detroit has not exactly been a fertile recruiting ground for LSU over the years. In fact, LSU had never signed a player from Michigan to a scholarship until now.

"Most of my friends didn't even realize how far Louisiana was away from Detroit until I told them," freshman offensive tackle Joseph Barksdale said. "They were like, 'You're going to LSU?' And yeah, it's been pretty much an eye-opener coming down to south Louisiana, just the culture. Things are a lot different. Detroit is hustle and bustle, go, go, go. Baton Rouge is laid back."

"I wanted to come where the good football was," he said. "I wanted to come to a good team. I wanted to experience a new culture as well. The fact that coach Miles was from up north, that was something that I looked at. LSU's not as far as USC. It's not as close as Ohio State. It has a really good engineering program. It had the No. 1 defense in the country, so either I was going to be playing with it or blocking it. That was going to make me better either way."

The Town Talk - www.thetowntalk.com - Alexandria-Pineville, Louisiana