LSU’s football team is coming off yet another “it wasn’t pretty, but we’ll take it” victory, this time against South Carolina, but it’s reflective of the team’s character.
It’s a team that gets hot flashes and a fever if it gets in the red zone. Three times against South Carolina the Tigers got within the shadow of the Gamecocks’ goal posts and failed to score a touchdown each time, at least salvaging a crucial field goal on the last red zone visit in the 20-10 win.
It’s as if they get within the opponent’s 20 and instead of thinking “golden opportunity,” they think “black hole,” and fret, “Oh, no, what do we do now?!”
Celebrations on offense, for a team that has scored more than 23 points only once through the first six games, are rare. Maybe that’s why the usually dependable defense overcompensates and stages group celebrations in the end zone after, say, an interception.
Instead of acting like, “no need to celebrate at this time; I merely did my job,” these guys decide to go stage their version of the follies in the end zone to celebrate an interception that decided only a change of possession.
It only gets harder from here for LSU. Odd as it is to say, this week’s stern challenge is Vanderbilt. At Vanderbilt. The Vanderbilt Commodores, once the butt of all football jokes in the Southeastern Conference, are just a few notches below LSU in the national rankings, and they’re almost as hungry to beat LSU as they were last year when they upset Alabama.
They were inspired then by a quote from former Alabama (and former LSU) coach Nick Saban. A quote that will live in infamy. A couple of weeks before last year’s Alabama-Vanderbilt game, Saban was talking about football in the SEC on the Pat McAfee show and said, “The only place you can play in the SEC that’s not hard to play is Vanderbilt. Because when you go to Vanderbilt, you have more fans than they have. And that’s no disrespect to them. It’s just the truth.”
That was bulletin board material from then until game time for the Commodores, and they responded on their home field with a stunning 40-35 upset of the Crimson Tide, playing then for Saban’s successor, first-year Bama coach Kalen DeBoer. The Vandy fans stormed the field, tore down the goal posts, took them to Broadway and eventually dumped them in the Cumberland River.
Alabama did beat Vanderbilt at Alabama two weeks ago, but the Commodores are 5-1 overall like the Tigers and they haven’t defeated LSU since 1990. At Vanderbilt. In a series LSU leads 25-7-1, six of Vandy’s wins were in Nashville. The Commodores’ triumph over LSU in ’90, by a 24-21 score, was their lone victory that season, and Mike Archer was fired after that 5-6 season as LSU’s head coach.
It appeared initially that LSU wide receiver Todd Kinchen had scored the winning touchdown in that 1990 game with three seconds left, but a ref ruled otherwise. Kinchen was penalized for offensive pass interference after catching a 42-yard Hail Mary pass from Chad Loup. Earlier in the game, he had missed a sure TD strike of 44 yards from LSU starting quarterback Sol Graves.
Archer strongly disputed the interference penalty. He said it came in a “jump-ball situation” in a cluster of players for both teams. He said it was an “horrific call.”
He added, “Sometimes, it’s just not meant to be.”
Although LSU had all it could handle playing South Carolins, with its elusive quarterback LaNorris “Houdini” Sellers, Vanderbilt whipped the Gamecocks, 31-7, on Sept. 13 in Columbia, S.C. And the Commodores have a firecracker dual-threat quarterback in Diego Pavia, who has passed for more than 1,400 yards this season while rushing for 865 yards. He has accounted for 23 touchdowns by land and air.
Vanderbilt will be a tough test for the Tigers. Then again, Louisiana Tech was a tough test for the Tigers. If LSU is to win, it must figure out a way to score touchdowns in the red zone instead of turning the ball over or settling for field goals.
That is their mission. They need to prove it’s not a “mission impossible.”