LSU beat South Carolina tonight, and as a fan I can’t be anything but happy about that. The Tigers move to 5-1 and are second in the SEC West behind Alabama. [Watch ESPN’s recap here.]
Nevertheless, I don’t think that LSU looked very impressive at all. Without question, they stunk up the 1st half. Against a better team, they would have been trailing by a big margin going into halftime. When that happens, it’s a different game. That’s exactly what happened when they played Florida, and I’m afraid it’s going to happen again when they play Alabama and perhaps Georgia.
I hate to be pessimistic, but I can see LSU ending the season with at least 2-3 losses. As far as championship contention is concerned, this is an off-year for LSU. I hope I’m wrong.
17 Comments
Matt Svoboda
Hopefully, it is clear that LSU is not a top ten team. Alabama and Florida are the only two really good teams in the SEC this year. The big 12 has four, maybe five…hmm?
Kyle Barrett
How many losses does LSU have? Mizzou? Kansas?
Brian (Another)
Hey, I’d take the “wins†part, sans mediocre. Some of us can be such complainers ;-).
Darius
Kyle, let’s look at who Mizzou has lost to… Okie State and Texas, the number 1 and number 6 teams in the country.
The Big 12 has Texas, OU, OSU, Texas Tech, Missouri, Kansas who are all top 20 teams. You’re in pretty heavy denial if you still believe that the SEC can hang with the Big 12 this year. All of the sports analysts have come to that conclusion a couple weeks ago.
Kyle Barrett
Darius…
I don’t think Mizzou or Kansas are on the same level as OU and Texas. I think Tech is in between OU/Tex and Mizzou/Kansas but they have yet to play anyone who can challenge them. So I’ll grant the Big 12 two definite and one possibly good/great team(s). TCU leads the nation in total defense but the next team from the Big 12 is OU at 34, Texas is 39, and OkSU is 47. The SEC has 8 teams in the top 25 for total defense and has 5 in the top 15 (per NCAA website). When Mizzou/Kansas play teams that play defense they lose. The OU/Texas game could have gone either way but neither of them has played great defense either. I’m not saying the SEC is better than the Big 12 because obviously alot of people think (based on the AP, etc) that it’s a good conference. But, to say that there is no doubt the Big 12 is better this year is a stretch in my opinion. There is a clear gap this season between Big 12/SEC and everyone else. But I don’t see a significant gap (no matter who we say is better) between Big 12 and SEC. I think the jury is still out.
kb
Jason
No one in the SEC has played the offenses that are in the Big XII. The truth will come soon, but we’ll have to wait until bowl season when the SEC defenses get to try and stop Sam Bradford, Colt McCoy, Chase Daniel, Graham Harrell, etc, etc.
Tim Tebow is the only SEC QB that can hang with those guys besides perhaps Jevan Snead (but he lost out the Texas job to McCoy so you’d have to give the Big XII the nod on that front). I read an article on ESPN that said that no team in the Big XII had encountered the defenses in the SEC which is true, but the converse is true as well.
I love football!
JCO
Kyle Barrett
Or, no one has played the defenses in the SEC. That’s my point. We can’t determine who’s better based on rankings alone. The SEC has 4 teams in the top 50 of total offense. The Big 12 has 5 in the top 10. It cuts both ways. Maybe the offenses in the Big 12 look better on paper because of no defense in the Big 12. Or maybe the defenses in the SEC look better on paper because of no offense in the SEC. How do you determine that? My point is that we shouldn’t pontificate (not a jab) who’s the best conference. The SEC has been dominant the last several years. The Big 12 has been good but not quite there from top to bottome during that same span. This year is obviously different though. But again it’s impossible to determine based soley (sp?) on rankings and total off/def stats.
kb
Darius
Jason beat me to it. The reason the SEC defenses are so “good” is because they face awful offenses. Let’s see, the LSU finally faced a good offense and what did they do, gave up like 50 points. The defenses in the Big 12 are solid (not great this year), but they are facing some of the best offensive machines in college football history.
Just watch one SEC game with at least one of the supposed “good” teams and then watch OU or Texas play in a Big 12 game. The SEC team squeaks by a 13-7 borefest while OU puts up 40 in the first half and sleepwalks through the rest of the game. It’s pretty clear that only Florida could hang with either OU or Texas. OU would be a lot better on defense but they lost their star linebacker and their secondary is really young. Texas is pretty good and would stuff every SEC offense except Florida.
Kyle Barrett
And the pontificating 🙂 continues!
kb
kevin hash
Darius
Yeah, I saw that. How does that ref still have a job?
Mark Gibson
Spurrier said that he didn’t do anything wrong.
Darius
Spurrier may have said that, but my eyes tell me differently. He moves in front of the QB, steps forward toward him, and raises his shoulder into him. He should have done almost exactly the opposite.
Mark Gibson
Maybe he was reliving his linebacker days. He was a linebacker at Kentucky from 1967-70.
JM
As a SBTS student and Georgia fan I just wanted to stop in and say…..
GO DAWGS! BEAT LSU!
Darius
Duke beat Vanderbilt, nuf said.
JM
alas…no lsu post this past weekend….