BATON ROUGE, La. — When Derrius Guice makes a cut, it’s so sudden it reminds LSU coach Ed Orgeron of a running back he coached at Southern California.

“His ability to jump cut, run to the left and jump cut to the right is about the — one of the best I’ve seen,” Orgeron said of the sophomore, who has been emerging as a star in the absence of Leonard Fournette. “He has some Reggie Bush-like cuts. He’s bigger and stronger than Reggie was in college, maybe not quite as fast, but he has cuts like Reggie had.”

And that comparison makes Guice beam.

He’s No. 5, the same number Bush wore at USC, and it’s not by accident.

“I grew up watching Reggie Bush,” he said. “I was a big fan of his, and I watched him through elementary school and middle school and to hear (Orgeron’s comparison) … watching his film paid off.”

It definitely paid off in LSU’s 42-7 win over Missouri on Saturday. With star running back Leonard Fournette out for the second time this season with an ankle injury, Guice got the start and rushed for 163 yards on just 17 carries while splitting snaps with Darrel Williams.

Guice is 2-for-2 in delivering the big yards in Fournette’s absence. In a 34-13 win over Jacksonville State earlier this season, he rushed for 155 yards on 19 carries.

What was different in his second start against Missouri was the offense. In the JSU game, LSU was still running the power-based I-formation offense where, on most plays, Guice would follow a fullback into the hole.

Against Missouri, LSU debuted new offensive coordinator Steve Ensminger’s approach, which was completely different from the offense of Miles and Cam Cameron.

Ensminger had the Tigers in several plays where the defense was forced to face the width of the field. In some, LSU would come out with four receivers and utilize previously little-used players like Russell Gage and Jazz Ferguson at receiver.

In others, the Tigers would come out with two tight ends and two receivers, giving the old “Ace” look. Again, the defense would have to spread horizontally to account for the tight ends and receivers in the passing game.

This seems to dovetail with the Bush-like cutting ability of Guice.

“I actually do like spread because the box isn’t as loaded and I don’t have the man defenders to worry about,” he said. “With the offensive line, they don’t have as much to worry about.”

With fewer players in the box, there are more cutting lanes for Guice to make his “Bush” cuts.

Nothing illustrated that better than his 42-yard touchdown run in the first quarter. Running out of the ace set with twin receivers on the right, Guice took a handoff going left, saw daylight to his right, so he cut right, then cut further right and ended up sprinting down the right sideline for a touchdown.

“There’s a lot of instinct there,” he said. “But there’s also a lot of vision.”

Of course, the Bush comparisons have their limits. The 5-foot-11, 212-pounder is not as fast as Bush but is stockier and runs with a physicality.

Before he started having runs that made his coach compare him to Bush this year, he made runs last year as Fournette’s backup that earned him a reputation for being a physical, almost angry runner with the ball in his hand.

In fact, Orgeron had another comparison for Guice in that regard.

“He’s tough as nails,” Orgeron said of Guice. “He runs the ball like Warren Sapp played defense, and he has an energy about him, and he has an attitude when he strikes you that he’s wanting to go through you.”

The thought of being compared to a Pro Football Hall of Fame defensive tackle made Guice chuckle.

“I guess I can see it,” he said, later adding, “but I’d prefer Ray Lewis.”

Whether Guice is planning on channeling his inner Bush, Sapp or Lewis, he may have to do it from the starting lineup again this week versus Florida.

Orgeron said Fournette would miss the early week practices and his status is “day-to-day.”

The honest thing, Orgeron said, “is I don’t know if he’s going to play.”

That’s OK, though. Because while we were all marveling at how Fournette compared to backs like Bo Jackson and Herschel Walker, who knew that his backup had a lot of Reggie Bush and a little bit of Warren Sapp in him?