NEW ORLEANS — Ed Orgeron got what every coach wants from a game — especially a season opener — Saturday night in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.

No. 13 LSU gave him a victory (27-0 against BYU), plenty of positives to build on and yet a few negatives to get the players’ attention. He can credibly tell them they still have a lot they need to do better.

"Obviously, we are going to eliminate the penalties. ... We are going to get better in the red zone." -- LSU coach Ed Orgeron

All in all, it was a solid debut for a team that, just like BYU, learned less than a week before kickoff that the game was being moved from Houston to New Orleans because of damage from Hurricane Harvey.

First the positives:

The defense was outstanding, yielding just 97 yards and not allowing the Cougars to reach midfield. (BTW, the last time LSU played in the Superdome it experienced similar offensive futility, not crossing midfield until the fourth quarter of a 21-0 loss to Alabama in the 2011 national championship game.)

But back to BYU’s problems. It was held scoreless for just the third time since 1975, accumulating its fewest yards in 43 years, including minus-5 rushing.

The Tigers sent five starters from last year’s defense to the NFL. They also played without perhaps their best defensive player — linebacker Arden Key, who’s recovering from shoulder surgery after making a school-record 12 sacks last season.

They played without two other starters who didn’t make the short trip from Baton Rouge — linebacker Donnie Alexander and cornerback Kevin Toliver — presumably because of suspensions. Orgeron didn’t confirm the reason for their absence or that of 11 other missing players, but he said last week that players facing disciplinary action would not make the trip.

“Obviously we’re going to handle everything in-house,” Orgeron said. “I expect our guys that were not here tonight to bounce back and have a great week next week. … We’ll have a lot of guys back next week.”

No problem.

Five freshmen, including three first-year ones, started on defense. Redshirt freshman cornerback Andraez “Greedy” Williams started and made an acrobatic interception of BYU quarterback Tanner Mangum, which preceded LSU’s second touchdown.

The impact of youngsters was also felt on offense, especially on the line and at wide receiver. In all, 23 Tigers played for the first time, including 15 true freshmen.

Orgeron said this freshman class is one of the best he has been around.

“Actually, I thought they were going to make more mistakes,” he said. “It seemed like they didn’t.”

Other positives were the running of Derrius Guice and the passing and coolness of Danny Etling, all of which contributed mightily to LSU possessing the ball for nearly 42 minutes.

Post-game on Saturday is for accentuating the positive, but Sunday and the start of a new week are about fixing the negatives.

There were the 10 penalties for 86 yards and a missed 34-yard field goal, which was pushed back 5 yards because of a false start. The missed field goal was the conclusion of one of four red-zone trips that yielded a total of six points. Twice the Tigers settled for field goals and once they were stopped on fourth-and-goal from the 1.

They did score touchdowns on each of the other three of their seven red-zone visits.

“On special teams we have some things to fix, but we will,” Orgeron said. “Obviously, we are going to eliminate the penalties. I think it was first-game jitters. We are going to get better in the red zone. We should have made a couple more touchdowns in the red zone.”

Now LSU gets its home opener against Chattanooga on Saturday to build on the good and improve the not-so-good before opening SEC play at Mississippi State in two weeks.