Winning championships is an expectation at LSU, no matter the sport.
Look no further than head baseball coach Jay Johnson and head women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey both winning national championships in their second year at LSU.
Both coaches were already big names in their respective sports when LSU Athletic Director Scott Woodward brought them to LSU, and exceeded the high expectations handed to them.
Now, arguably the most talked about and scrutinized of Woodward’s hires enters year two with similar expectations.
But are those expectations realistic?
When looking at the success of both LSU women’s basketball and LSU baseball, the formula was similar. One of the key elements was the transfer portal.
Each team added a transcendent player out of the transfer portal for their championship season who became the face of the team.
Mulkey added Angel Reese, a Maryland transfer who already established herself at the college level in the Big 10 after leaving high school as a McDonald’s All-American. She entered the season with high expectations and finished as both a national champion and one of the two most recognized players in women’s college basketball.
On the baseball field, Johnson’s star addition was ace pitcher Paul Skenes, a former two-way player who made a name for himself at the Air Force Academy. Once again, expectations were high, but few expected him to be named the National Pitcher of the Year, break the Southeastern Conference single-season strikeout record, win a national championship and become the No. 1 pick in the MLB Draft.
Reese and Skenes weren’t the only transfers on their respective teams either. Each coach leaned heavily on the transfer portal in each of their first two seasons.
Kelly did the same.
In 2022, Kelly’s first year, LSU football ranked third in the 247sports transfer portal rankings and ranked second in the 2023 rankings. There was no Reese or Skenes-type player in LSU’s 2023 transfer class, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t already a season-changing player on the team.
Jayden Daniels came to LSU as part of the 2022 transfer class, after being the starting quarterback for three years at Arizona State. In his first season at LSU, he was one of the main reasons LSU won the SEC West and had its first 10-win season since 2019.
He threw for 2,913 yards and ran for 885 yards in 2022, and now enters the 2023 season with the second-best odds to win the Heisman Trophy, according to FanDuel and BetMGM.
The last five years proved that it takes elite quarterback play to win a national championship. Whether Daniels can rise from good to elite is one of the biggest questions surrounding LSU football in 2023.
“I think that development in his own mindset and the way he attacks things, is probably where we’ve seen that growth. And that’s been exciting to watch,” Kelly said of Daniels’ growth during a press conference.
There are similarities in how LSU football’s roster is constructed compared to its championship winning counterparts in baseball and women’s basketball, but there are also similarities in competition.
The easiest comparison is in women’s basketball where LSU entered the season with high expectations but were still firmly behind an SEC East juggernaut.
In LSU football’s case, that juggernaut is Georgia. While LSU made the SEC Championship in 2022, it was humbled by Georgia, losing 50-30 in a game that never felt close.
LSU women’s basketball had a similar hump to get over entering the season, trying to get past SEC powerhouse South Carolina. Even in the championship season, LSU lost by over 20 points to South Carolina, but avoided the Gamecocks in the NCAA Tournament.
LSU football could follow a similar path. It doesn’t face reigning SEC and national champion Georgia in the regular season, and if it can make it past conference championship week with no more than one loss, the odds are in LSU’s favor to make the College Football Playoff.
For Kelly, though, the focus isn’t on the schedule or any other team’s path to a championship. What gives him confidence is the growth and maturation of the team from last season.
When he took over for Ed Orgeron following the 2021 season, a culture reset was needed. Now in his second year at the helm, Kelly leads a team that he says understands the process he implemented and knows what it takes to be consistent.
“We understand the process, we understand the things necessary to become more consistent in everything that we do to be a championship football team and that is right down to the smallest of details,” Kelly said. “This is a hard thing to do, to be consistent in anything in life and our guys clearly understand that a lot better than they did coming into the season last year.”
Kelly’s process-oriented approach brought him success at each of his previous coaching jobs. It took him just two seasons to lead Cincinnati to the Orange Bowl and three to lead Notre Dame to a national championship game appearance.
With the talent LSU has, if it can consistently play to its strengths, a path to the College Football Playoff exists. Given where LSU finished while still learning how to be consistent, a team that now knows how to implement its process and be consistent in each game can reasonably expect to build on an already impressive start to Kelly’s LSU tenure.
