The No. 10 LSU football team has a bye this weekend, but the Southeastern Conference has plenty of big matchups. Here’s a roundup of some key games LSU can watch while it takes a break Saturday.Arkansas (3-2, 1-2)  at No. 1 Florida (5-0, 3-0)Arkansas, fresh off a 44-23 win at then-No. 17 Auburn, heads to Gainesville, Fla., to face the Florida Gators this weekend.”I like the way our team is playing,” said Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino in a teleconference. “We are playing with much more confidence, and we are playing faster.”Arkansas is hoping to have senior running back Michael Smith back this week after the senior tweaked his hamstring in the second half of Saturday’s win. “He went out last night and did some work,” Petrino said. “Hopefully we will get more out of him tonight and he will be ready for game time.”Smith finished last season fourth in the SEC in rushing while starting just 10 games. He averaged just more than 107 yards a game last season but is only averaging 65 per game this season.”We have more weapons on our team than we did a year ago,” Petrino said. “Last year we gave him the ball two out of three snaps.”Florida coach Urban Meyer said the Gators are monitoring Smith to see if he plays. “He ripped us apart last year,” Meyer said. “I never really heard of him until we played them and I saw it first hand. Hard guy to tackle, great acceleration through the hole — they are a big zone running team, and he’s perfect for it.”Petrino said the Razorbacks are preparing for the Gators’ offense and defense in addition to their special teams.   Florida is fresh off a 13-3 victory against LSU, and Meyer praised his team for how it came together in the game.”The only chance you have to win in an environment like that is to have a close team that is going to not give in when they have an opportunity to give in,” Meyer said.Meyer said Arkansas is one of the hottest teams in the country. “Offensively they are as well as I ever seen throwing the ball, and of course they’ve got No. 21 at tailback so this is going to be a real test for us,” he said.Kentucky (2-3, 0-3) at Auburn (5-1, 2-1)Auburn is hoping to rebound from its loss to the Razorbacks when it hosts Kentucky.After facing the SEC’s leading kick returner in Arkansas sophomore Dennis Johnson the Tigers’ host the conference’s second leading return man this weekend — Kentucky junior Derrick Locke.  “He’s got great balance, he is really hard to tackle on one, and once he gets momentum down the field — we’ve got problems,” said Auburn coach Gene Chizik. Chizik said the key to stopping the return game is good tackling. “We had a 70-yard return on us last week, and we had three or four guys in position to make a tackle, and we were 0-for-3,” he said.The Wildcats will likely be without their starting quarterback, junior Mike Hartline.”Hartline is out still,” said Kentucky coach Rich Brooks. “We are trying to determine what to do at that position.”Brooks said his team hopes to have one of its top cornerbacks back for Saturday’s matchup in junior Paul Warford. “Paul Warford did make it through practice on a very limited basis, and we’ll see how his quad responds,” Brooks said.No. 22 South Carolina (5-1, 2-1) at No. 2 Alabama (6-0, 3-0) South Carolina heads to Alabama on Saturday. “We are looking forward to playing Alabama, the No. 2 team in the country, in Tuscaloosa Saturday night and seeing what happens,” said South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier. The Tide are undefeated and the Gamecocks’ only loss this  season came against Georgia, when they fell, 41-37, on Sept. 12.The Tide have the SEC’s top-ranked run defense and fourth best pass defense allowing 65.7 yards and 154.8 yards, respectively.”They’ve played together for a while now,” Spurrier said.  “I think there’s seven senior starters, so they got a ton of experience there within the group, and they don’t make many mistakes.”—-Contact Amos Morale at [email protected]