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LSU football: Tigers’ resilience made the difference in beating Florida
By Les East
Published:
LSU has had their resilience tested this season.
Over and over and over.
Sometimes they have been up to the challenge, sometimes they haven’t.
The Tigers showed resilience in their 37-34 upset victory over No. 6 Florida on Saturday night at The Swamp.
Over and over and over.
They entered the game at the end of a week in which they were thoroughly whipped and embarrassed by No. 1 Alabama 55-17, star tight end Arik Gilbert left the program and the administration self-imposed a postseason ban that guarantees this season will end without a bowl game.
But the Tigers were undaunted as more than a 3-touchdown underdog.
What was left of them came to play. They were undermanned but not outmanned.
They watched Kyle Trask drive the Gators toward the LSU goal line on the game’s 1st possession, and they came up with a goal-line stand.
They watched Trask run 1 yard for a touchdown and a 7-0 lead on the Gators’ 2nd possession. Then Max Johnson came up with a tying touchdown on the 2nd possession of his 1st start.
They watched Cordale Flott get ejected for targeting and join injured fellow starting cornerback Derek Stingley Jr. on the sideline. Then Eli Ricks came up with a 68-yard pick-6 against Trask for a 14-7 lead.
They watched Florida score 10 straight points. They answered with 10 points of their own to hand the Gators their 1st halftime deficit of the season, 24-17.
They saw their 17-play drive to start the 3rd quarter produce merely a field goal, and Trask answer with a touchdown run and a touchdown pass for a 31-27 Florida lead after 3 quarters. But they answered with Johnson’s touchdown pass to Tre Bradford to grab a 34-31 lead early in the 4th.
They saw the Gators move 76 yards in 3 plays to the Tigers 9 with a chance to take a lead late in the 4th quarter. They pushed them back so they had to settle for a tying field goal.
Then Cade York untied the score with an LSU-record 57-yard field goal, and Florida’s Evan McPherson missed a 51-yarder as time expired.
Ballgame: LSU 37, Florida 34.
Time after time after time, the Tigers had every reason to believe this game was going to end the way virtually every development since Jan. 13 has ended for them – in disappointment.
But they didn’t allow this game to end in disappointment.
It’s easy to try to diminish LSU’s performance by focusing on Florida’s lapses.
The Gators looked past this game to the SEC Championship Game against Alabama next week.
Trask’s careless grounding penalty turned a possible go-ahead touchdown drive into a mere tying field-goal drive that produced the Gators’ final points.
A Gators brain cramp produced the shoe-throwing penalty that kept the winning drive alive.
The Gators missed a potential tying field goal on the game’s final play.
If the Gators had handled any of that stuff better, the Tigers might have lost.
But they didn’t.
LSU was more focused on the task at hand.
LSU pressured Trask into his grounding penalty.
No Tiger lost his cool enough to grab an opposing player’s shoe and hurl it 20 yards or so up the field. (By the way, Kayshon Boutte learned his lesson from prematurely letting the football drop before he reached the goal line last week and ran 5 yards past the back of the end zone before releasing the ball on his touchdown catch against the Gators.)
At the end, LSU’s kicker made his kick, and Florida’s kicker didn’t make his.
Yeah, Florida bungled some stuff that benefited LSU.
But LSU didn’t do as much bungling as Florida did.
LSU won because they were more resilient than Florida.
If an underdog keeps refusing to allow a game to go the way conventional wisdom says it’s supposed to go, sometimes conventional wisdom gets proven wrong.
And the game winds up the way it should have wound up.
Les East is a New Orleans-based football writer who covers LSU for SaturdayDownSouth.com. Follow him on Twitter @Les_East.
