Ed Orgeron got what he wanted.

The LSU head coach has insisted for weeks that he wanted to play Alabama.

The Tigers will play the No. 1 Crimson Tide on Saturday night in Tiger Stadium.

This might seem like a “be careful what you wish for” moment, but maybe it’s not that simple.

The Tigers’ numerous COVID-related absences forced a postponement of the Nov. 14 game.

The rivalry game hung in limbo for more than 2 weeks while the SEC worked through a variety of COVID-induced changes.

It was possible the game would have to be canceled. Orgeron said he wanted to play the game. He repeated it every time he was asked about it.

He’s a competitor. He wants to compete against the best. He wants to play what passes for a complete schedule in this season filled with postponements and cancellations all around the country.

He wants his players to have the opportunity to compete against the best.

“Alabama is a great team, a great program,” Orgeron said Monday as Alabama week got under way for a second time this season. “This is about us, about us getting our team ready to play a great game, doing the best that we possibly can.”

That’s the mission for every team in every game – to prepare as best it can and perform the best it can under whatever circumstances arise.

Oddsmakers have made the Tide a 4-touchdown favorite against a team that prevailed 46-41 in Bryant-Denny Stadium on its way to a national championship last season.

Of course, it’s not the same teams.

Alabama is still Alabama – 8-0 and steamrolling its way to an SEC West title, to its customary position as a strong favorite in the SEC Championship Game, almost certainly to a return to the CFP.

LSU is a shell of what it was last season – 3-4 and staring at the floor of the SEC West standings while the ceiling has disappeared from sight.

A team that already lost more than a dozen players to the NFL and 3 starters to preseason opt-outs will be playing its first game since wide receiver Terrace Marshall Jr., the most productive Tiger this season, opted out.

And Myles Brennan is still hurt and the offense will be directed by 1 or both shaky freshmen – TJ Finley and Max Johnson.

Before last year’s victory, LSU had lost 8 straight games to Alabama.

Beating the Tide was the biggest hurdle confronting Orgeron in his 4-year-long attempt to show his legions of skeptics that he wasn’t in over his head.

He cleared that hurdle and oversaw as good a season as any college football team has ever had.

But that was all so pre-COVID.

This Tigers team enters this game seemingly the least qualified of Orgeron’s teams to face the Tide.

On one hand, the expectations for LSU are so low that it won’t take a whole lot for the Tigers to meet them.

The defense is coming off its best performance of the season. Maybe it can build off that effort (13 points and 267 yards allowed to No. 5 Texas A&M) and keep this game from getting out of hand.

But probably not.

On the other hand, if Alabama covers that point spread, the performance will suggest that not only has LSU not caught up with Alabama as a program, but it is farther behind than it was at any time during the 8-game losing streak.

Still, this year is unlike any other year and trying to project what it means down the road is tricky.

Maybe the LSU program isn’t as far behind Alabama’s as Saturday’s outcome could suggest.

Maybe next November things will look much different than they do now, just as things now look drastically different than they did in November 2019.

“We built a championship program,” Orgeron said. “We will be champions again. We have some stuff we have to get fixed. I know we have to fix it. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again.”

Orgeron took over the program on an interim basis 4 games into the 2016 season. His first full season as head coach came in 2017. In 2019 he ended the losing streak against the Tide and won a national championship.

He brought the program a long way in a short period of time.

So he has earned the benefit of the doubt in trying to show 2020 is an aberration and not the start of a trend.

“I feel good about what we built here over my length as the head coach,” Orgeron said.

He added that the program has “a great culture inside the building.”

But Orgeron also acknowledged how far the Tigers have fallen.

“You’ve always got to represent LSU with pride,” he said. “The standard performance here is very high. We have not met that, OK?”

They haven’t come close.

Orgeron said there are young players on this team “that are going to be just as good” as the 2019 alums now playing in the NFL.

“They’re just not there yet,” he added.

We’ll see.

Orgeron said you need to built “grit” and “toughness” in a football team.

Playing the No. 1 team in the country helps you do that.

“Nobody wants to go through a season like this,” Orgeron said, “but I do believe we’re building character and grit and it’s going to pay off for us later on.”

Those 3-4 hours on Saturday night might represent one of the lowest points in Orgeron’s tenure to date.

But if he is going to rebuild the program to where it was just a few months ago, playing this game – regardless of the final score – could be a useful step in that direction.

“Playing Alabama is a great rivalry for us, a great game over the years for us, a tremendous challenge,” Orgeron said. “They’re the No. 1 team in the country coming to Tiger Stadium. Let’s play.”