By GLENN GUILBEAU
Tiger Rag Editor
An Air B&B opponent like Nicholls State is not only supposed to be an easy rental win, but also a relaxing and rejuvenating experience to refresh a team like an 18th-ranked LSU for more strenuous Saturdays after a rough one a week ago.
But the way LSU coach Brian Kelly described his team’s 44-21 win over the Colonels sounded more like the Tigers had just beat Alabama in an exhaustive slugfest that went into overtime.
“Certainly, that was a team that was tired, a team that did not play its very best,” Kelly said of LSU, which led Nicholls State by only 23-21 early in the third quarter after surrendering a 67-yard touchdown run to tailback/Wildcat quarterback Collin Guggenheim.
Tired? Against a FCS school from the Southland Conference that plays such monsters of the sub-mid-majors like Houston Christian and Texas A&M Commerce.
“They were physical,” Kelly said of a team with a huge talent and size gap below LSU’s. “They were physical, and they controlled the clock.” Which means your team was not physical enough at certain times, meaning weak.
Nicholls did have a day advantage on game preparation. The Colonels lost to Louisiana Tech, 25-17, in Ruston last Saturday. LSU lost last Sunday night, 27-20, to USC in Las Vegas. Oh my, what a disadvantage!
“You know, we had a long week,” Kelly lamented as weakly as his defense played in allowing 295 yards and three TD drives of 75 yards or more to Nicholls. “It was a short week.”
But this was Nicholls! This is a short team from a short league.
This is a team that lost to TCU by 41-6 last season and to Tulane by 36-7.
“We got back at 5 a.m. on Monday. We did not have the normal recovery after playing a very good opponent in a game that went right down to the last seconds. And we had a long travel back,” Kelly said, as if he was talking about a Little League team.
Aw, did the players not sleep well?
You weren’t playing a “normal” team, coach Kelly. You were playing Nicholls.
We’re talking about Nicholls! Yes, this team won the Southland Conference last season, but this is a team that lost to TCU by 41-6 and to Tulane by 36-7 last season.
“Look, I am not here to make a million excuses,” Kelly said, and went right on making them.
“But that was a team that was fatigued, and it affected them,” he said. “And it showed.”
But we’re always hearing about how LSU has the nation’s best nutritionists and facilities.
And Kelly just guided the media on a tour around the football facility’s new state of the art recovery center before the opener. It is equipped with a MECOTEC brand cryo chamber, where players get a three-minute blast at -120 degrees to help with recovery.
This oasis of rebirth has massage chairs, fancy sleep pods and hydrotherapy specializing in rejuvenating cells. There are these sensory deprivation, REM enhancing sleep pods that LSU associate trainer Owen Stanley said can make a 30-minute nap feel like a five-hour sleep.
So, did the team just skip all that after getting in from Vegas?
“We can get our players to perform at the highest level all year, and that’s what this is about,” Kelly said during the tour. “We’re talking about the potential of 17 college football games, which is equal to an NFL schedule. To do that, they’ve got to learn about recovery.”
But they’re fatigued in game two?
Maybe, LSU should look into getting some of its millions back for the cost of this recovery center and pay the fans back for having to watch this game.
And it’s not going to get any easier. LSU has to fly to the other coast this week and play Saturday morning (11 a.m., ABC) at South Carolina (2-0), which looked anything but tired in beating Kentucky, 31-6, on Saturday.
I can hear Kelly now if LSU loses:
“It was such an early game and a long flight.”
LSU has played for two weeks now like it is spending too much time in its luxurious football facility and not enough on the freakin’ practice field.
“We’ve got to get to complementary football,” Kelly said as his offense again did not answer defensive stops with scoring drives. “If that doesn’t happen soon, we will be talking about things we don’t want to talk about.”
Talk about this. If a team is already tired and weak in week two, it’s more than that. It’s just a bad team.
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