One of the best offenses the No. 5 LSU football team will face this season calls Bowling Green home.
Bowling Green, Kentucky, is not one of the other 13 towns in the Southeastern Conference nor school in a Power Five conference.
Rather, the Tigers (6-0, 4-0 SEC) will be pitted against Western Kentucky University this Saturday, an opponent claiming the ninth-ranked total offense in the Football Bowl Subdivision and the second-best passer in the country.
The only other quarterback ahead of Hilltopper graduate student signal caller Brandon Doughty is Bowling Green State University senior Matt Johnson — the other Bowling Green in Ohio.
Regardless of the league, the Hilltoppers (6-1, 4-0 Conference USA) play in or their national exposure, something is clear amongst LSU coach Les Miles and his players: Western Kentucky is no joke.
And it’s not just the “take every team seriously” coach speak often heard.
“I voted for them to be in the top 25, if anybody asks,” Miles said.
Certainly, defeating a top-25 team would boost the Tigers’ résumé at the end of the season. But the Hilltoppers’ offensive production alone has LSU’s attention, despite a bye week looming before the Nov. 7 road trip to No. 8 University of Alabama.
Along with Western Kentucky’s sixth-ranked scoring offense, it also ranks No. 3 in turnover margin nationally. The Hilltoppers are +13 in the takeaway-giveaway category, which partially can credit the offense’s highest completion percentage in the nation.
Sophomore running back Leonard Fournette admitted the Tigers took the last nonconference opponent, Eastern Michigan University, for granted, so the attention to detail will be much different this week. Miles, though, said the lack of focus against the Eagles was in response to his team’s perception of Eastern Michigan, something that won’t be the case against Western Kentucky — on both sides of the ball.
“Eastern Michigan was not 6-1 coming into the contest, did not have one of the nation’s No. 1 quarterbacks and [were] not a complete team,” Miles said. “This is a complete team. This team will stop you on defense, will move the football and score on offense and will play very dangerous special teams. So we recognize it, and it’ll be easy for them to see.
“One thing about it, when you looked at Florida’s defense, you said, man, that defense can play. They will find and make like observations with this Western Kentucky team.”
Coming back down to earth after an emotional win against the Gators isn’t lost on LSU players, especially two of the heroes of the Saturday’s game, junior kicker Trent Domingue and senior holder Brad Kragthorpe.
While Kragthorpe and Domingue’s fake field goal resulted in the go-ahead touchdown, keeping the Tigers undefeated, the team is ready. Kragthorpe saw Doughty enough times to know LSU needs to be ready.
“I’ve watched him for a couple of years,” Kragthorpe said. “He’s good. Obviously, playing quarterback, you like to watch other quarterbacks around the country. … In my mind, he’s got to be one of the top quarterbacks in the country right now.”
Staying alert during the practice week for Doughty and the mid-major foe isn’t something difficult for the Tigers, said junior tight end Colin Jeter.
“We do a great job of approaching every team the same each week,” Jeter said. “That’s where our focus is going to be again. Obviously, we have a lot room to improve — in all three aspects. We’re going to continue to focus on that and focus on what Western Kentucky does and how we can gameplan against them.”