By RON HIGGINS, Journal Sports
BATON ROUGE—Every football Saturday, LSU head coach Brian Kelly hopes his team solves lingering problems without creating new ones.
He also knows he’s running out of time. The 16th-ranked Tigers (2-1 overall, 1-0 SEC) are three weeks away from playing No. 5 Ole Miss on Oct. 12 here to start a gauntlet of the Tigers’ final seven SEC games in eight weeks.
It’s why in the next two games (both at home) against UCLA (1-1 overall, 0-1 Big Ten) on Saturday at 2:30 p.m. and South Alabama next Saturday at 6:45 p.m. before an open date, it’s imperative LSU plays up to the role as a sizeable favorite.
And that means solving the Tigers’ bugaboo of excruciating slow starts. In 10 of LSU’s 30 games under Kelly, they’ve trailed by double digits in the first half.
They are 6-4 digging out of such holes, and Kelly certainly isn’t blind to the problem.
“We have `start fast’ signs in our (practice facilities) hallways” he said. “We talk every day about starting fast. So, it’s one of those things you have to look at what does our practice preparation look like? Do we start fast in practice and preparation?
“For the last two weeks, we have gone 11-on-11, ones versus ones (starting offense vs. starting defense) in the first 15 minutes of practice. We’re backing up all those things with actionable items relative to what we’re doing. Last Saturday, we got to the stadium 30 minutes earlier than usual.
“We’re going to keep finding ways to put our guys in that position, but at the end of the day, we got to play at a higher level, and we got to coach our guys at a higher level. That’s going to get us off to a better start.”
Though the Tigers had to battle back for a 36-33 road win at South Carolina in LSU’s SEC opener last Saturday, there were some improvements in two noticeably weak areas.
Despite allowing two huge TD runs of 75 and 66 yards that accounted for over a third of South Carolina’s 398 total offense, LSU’s defense was disruptive for the first time this season.
With different defenders blitzing from all directions, LSU had a season-high nine tackles for loss including five sacks, forced four fumbles and recovered two, and got its first interception of the year.
“I love how we’ve got a lot of different blitzes, different looks and different packages,” said LSU senior edge rusher Bradyn Swinson, who had three sacks vs. South Carolina and was named the SEC Defensive Player of the Week. “You just got a whole bunch of guys that are just dogs on the field that are (lined up) in different spots on different plays. When the other team sees that, it’s like “I ain’t seen that before.’ ”
Kelly knows the next step in the Tigers’ defensive evolution is the elimination of big plays.
“We’ve done a good job in so many other areas that it gets glossed over by (allowing) the explosive plays, and rightly so,” he said.
“What we haven’t had is consistency. We do a good job for a number of plays, and then we don’t. We need consistency play in and play out where every play you do your job and not somebody else’s.”
LSU’s rushing attack, which averaged 90.5 yards and just 3.9 per attempt in the first two games, got a boost from hard-running true freshman Caden “Bull” Durham. He ran for 98 yards and two TDs on 11 attempts vs. South Carolina getting most of his yardage after making tacklers miss at the line of scrimmage before breaking more tackles downfield.
Durham became the first LSU true freshman to rush for two TDs in an SEC game since Leonard Fournette vs. Florida in 2014. He’s also the first LSU true freshman to rush for two TDs in his SEC debut since Charles Scott vs. Mississippi State in 2006.
“It’s amazing for him to come into his first SEC game and perform the way he did,” LSU sixth-year senior starting running back Josh Williams said of Durham. “He was a big spark plug for the offense. He picked up the energy on our sideline.”
LSU’s offense should get another energy injection vs. UCLA because Kelly said junior wide receiver Chris Hilton will make his season debut after being sidelined the first two games with a bone bruise.
Hilton, considered the Tigers’ best deep threat, was a starter before he got hurt.
“You can’t be out almost a month, and then just and here’s Chris Hilton tearing it up,” Kelly said. “He can’t come in and pick up where he left off. It’s going to take a few weeks for him to get back into action. But he’s going to help us, and he’s going to be a main player in what we do before the season’s over.”
GO FIGURE
0: Games played by UCLA in the state of Louisiana
2-0-1: LSU’s Tiger Stadium record vs. Big Ten Conference teams
4: First-time visiting teams this year to Tiger Stadium (Nicholls State, UCLA, South Alabama, Oklahoma)
14: UCLA’s road games lifetime against five SEC teams (excluding new members Texas and Oklahoma) with a record of 4-8-2
1987: The last season LSU played a Big Ten team in Tiger Stadium, battling Ohio State to a 13-13 tie
91: Career receptions for LSU’s Mason Taylor, the most any tight end in Tigers’ history
Contact Ron at ronhigginsmedia@gmail.com