Our list of the SEC’s best and worst in Week 4:

STUDS

1. Leonard Fournette: He just keeps getting better. With 631 rushing yards on the season, Fournette not only leads the SEC, he ranks third in the country. Not bad, but when you consider that he’s played one fewer game than every other rusher in the top 10, it becomes clear just how amazing the LSU sophomore has been. On a per-game basis, he’s leading the nation in rushing by more than 40 yards per game. He put up 244 yards against Syracuse, a career-high and just six yards short of the LSU single-game record.

2. Christian Kirk: Four games into his college career, Kirk already has three 100-yard receiving games and, on a team loaded with receiving talent, is making a strong case that he’s already the best of the bunch. He set career-highs in the win over Arkansas with eight catches for 173 yards and two touchdowns and is now leading the conference in receiving yards with 442.

3. Richie Brown: The junior linebacker was the leader of a Mississippi State defense that gave up some yards but held firm in key situations in a 17-9 win over Auburn. Brown finished with a game-high 13 tackles (12 solo), with three tackles for loss and two sacks. He ranks fourth in the conference with 39 stops through four games.

DUDS

1-tie. Butch Jones & Bret Bielema: We should start this by saying that if just one or two plays broke differently for either team, there’s a much better feeling around both teams and their coaches today. But that’s not what happened. Again. Tennessee and Arkansas were the darkhorse picks of the East and West this summer, respectively, and while both have shown glimpses of the teams many expected them to be, those snapshots are blotted out by their inability to close out a win.

Both head coaching staffs made some questionable decisions on Saturday as they squandered leads in the fourth quarter. But more than the micro-level decision-making that’s much easier in hindsight, what’s troubling is the fact that with both coaches in Year 3, neither has developed a consistent winner — a team that can shrug off adversity and come out with a win against a good team.

After some positive indicators last season, both the Vols and Hogs are scuffling again in 2015. As fate would have it, they’ll meet this weekend in Knoxville. The winner will have new life and a .500 conference record. The loser will be 0-2 in the SEC and faced with a fan base of dwindling patience.

3. Maty Mauk: Missouri’s junior quarterback has never been the kind of signal-caller who dazzles with consistent greatness, but he’s always been one who finds a way to win. The fact that he couldn’t make that happen on Saturday against Kentucky makes his pedestrian numbers — 15 of 30 for 180 yards — look and feel even worse. To be fair, Mauk is tasked with running an offense that has little running game while Russell Hansbrough is at less than 100 percent, and he still hasn’t found reliable receivers to replace the key pieces now departed from last year’s team. But as a veteran quarterback and the leader of the offense, the responsibility to make plays falls to Mauk, and he wasn’t able to do that on Saturday. While Kentucky marched for a pair of second-half touchdowns, Missouri’s final five possessions netted just two field goals and three punts.