The LSU faithful were not the only ones who arrived late to the party with an 11 a.m. kickoff Saturday during LSU’s 42-6 win over Utah State.
LSU’s defense came into the game knowing it was going to have its hands full with Jordan Love and the Utah State offense that was ranked No. 9 in the country, and the Tigers held them to six points and 159 yards.
There has been a lot of talk about the way LSU’s defense has been playing, and they knew they were not competing at the level they need to with the heart of Southeastern Conference play coming up.
“We heard a lot of the noise about our defense,” said junior safety Grant Delpit. “I think we came and shut up a lot of doubters. We need to keep it up next week and the week after that and keep going.”
LSU started sluggish, allowing Utah State to have its way with the depleted LSU defense until the Tigers came to life in the second quarter.
LSU’s defense had one of, if not its best, performance of the season against one of its top offensive opponents thus far. All around, the defense played lights out.
One thing that contributed to the success of the LSU defense was the pace of play and balance of the offense. With LSU’s offense putting together lengthy drives, it allowed the defense to get more adequate rest.
“If our defense is going to play like that, we can do anything we want,” said coach Ed Orgeron. “It was just a chess match out there, but we wanted to be able to control the clock, give our defense some rest and let them play.”
Utah State had not been held under 20 points this season, but LSU managed to stifle the Aggies.
LSU’s defense, led by junior linebacker Patrick Queen, held the explosive Utah State offense to a dismal 19 yards rushing on 22 attempts. Queen led the way for the Tigers defense with five solo tackles and had three tackles-for-loss to go along with it.
“Tackling was definitely something that we emphasized during practice this week,” said junior linebacker Jacob Phillips. “Coach Aranda made sure to put us in different types of positions to make different types of tackles.”
Love, Utah State’s highly touted quarterback, was limited to 130 yards through the air, completing 50 percent of his passes. Love also had a season-high three interceptions. Freshman cornerback Derek Stingley Jr. and junior defensive backs Kary Vincent Jr. and Delpit were credited with interceptions.
The interception was Stingley’s second of the season, which leads LSU, while Vincent and Delpit both recorded their first interceptions of the season.
The Aggies were limited to 48 total yards of offense during the second half.
In addition, the Tigers defense played exceptionally well when it came to third downs. The Aggies were able to convert one time on third down on 12 attempts. Utah State was also limited to 10 first downs the entire game.
The Tigers’ defense along with the rest of the team hope to maintain this momentum going into a primetime matchup with Florida at 7 p.m. Saturday.