It’s not exactly Alabama on national television.
No. 18 LSU (0-1) opens the home portion of its football schedule on Saturday night in Tiger Stadium (6:30 p.m., ESPN+, SEC Network+) against Nicholls State (0-1), a school of about 5,000 undergraduate students who would make up about five percent of the 102,321 capacity of Tiger Stadium.
Nicholls State, located just 90 minutes south of LSU in Thibodaux, has never played LSU in football. And it is the last four-year college in the state with football never to have done so. The Tigers are a 51-point favorite, give or take a few crawfish.
“There’s obviously going to be a lot of excitement for our guys going into Tiger Stadium,” Nicholls State coach Tim Rebowe said on Tiger Rag Radio this week.
But how much excitement for LSU’s players? Well, at least one sees it as spine tingling.
“Oh, I can’t wait,” sophomore linebacker Whit Weeks of Watkinsville, Georgia, said during player interviews this week. “Tiger Stadium is my favorite place on earth. Playing in front of 100,000 people, it’s the greatest feeling in the world, so I cannot wait. I’m excited.”
Weeks did not feel the same way as Sunday night turned into Monday following the Tigers’ 27-20 loss to USC in Las Vegas.
“It was definitely rough – the first 24 hours,” he said. “I mean, you never want to lose. And we lost, so it was a tough 24 hours. But at this point, we’re moving on to Nicholls.”
LSU’s defense did improve significantly over last season under new coordinator Blake Baker despite the loss.
“We’ve made a lot of progress,” Weeks said. “I think we have a lot more confidence, which is the main thing that I see from last year.”
For one thing, LSU’s defenders seem to know where they’re supposed to be before snaps, which was not always the case last season under then-coordinator Matt House.
“Confidence not only in our abilities, but knowing the playbook,” said Weeks, who made six tackles with three solos and 1.5 for losses. “That’s huge for us.”
LSU coach Brian Kelly said he liked his new defense in every area except safety. Weeks particularly liked the play of the defensive line. Defensive end Sai’vion Jones, for example, sacked USC quarterback Miller Moss twice and had five tackles in all with a forced fumble and batted down pass.
“I know a lot of people had questions about the defensive line, but if you go watch the game, I don’t think those people are going to have the same questions,” Weeks said. “Sai’vion was outstanding. He had the best performance on our defense. To see a guy like that who everybody looks up to play like that, it brings everybody else up around him.”
Kelly left the defense with one message, though.
“We had great effort,” Weeks said. “But at the end of the day, he said, we weren’t able to execute when it mattered the most.”
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