BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — On a wall inside LSU's team meeting room are rectangular nameplates representing up to 15 games the third-ranked Tigers could play this season if they make it into the College Football Playoff.
Each nameplate is blank except for the one representing LSU's next opponent, which is Louisiana Tech on Saturday night. Above that is a blank plate that read “Clemson” a week earlier.
LSU is 1-0 for the first time since winning a national title in 2019 and coach Brian Kelly wants the Tigers
to demonstrate they can maintain the same focus and intensity this week — as five-touchdown, home favorites — that they exhibited on the road as slight underdogs against a top-10 opponent last weekend.
“Every Saturday, there’s a standard,” Kelly said. "They’re going to have to live up to those standards and they know that.”
Now in his fourth year at LSU, Kelly has adopted and preached the mantra of “1-0.”
It's not exactly original. About 80 miles down the Mississippi River in New Orleans, Tulane spent the entire 2022 season talking about “going 1-0 each week" until it capped the most successful campaign in Green Wave history with a victory over Southern California in the Cotton Bowl.
During warmups at Clemson last week, LSU players wore purple T-shirts with “1-0” written in gold — a move that risked coming off as arrogant and presumptuous, although Kelly insists that was not the point.
“This wasn’t rubbing it in Clemson’s nose," Kelly said. "This is our mantra for the year.”
This week, Kelly offered a couple of reasons why the Tigers need to respect their next opponent.
First, LSU came out flat last season as prohibitive favorites against Nicholls State before pulling away in the second half. Meanwhile, Kelly noted that for the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs (1-0): “This is the biggest game of their career for many of them. So, we have to be prepared.”
Although the Bulldogs said they've largely ignored being listed as 37 1/2-point underdogs, Tech coach Sonny Cumbie left little doubt about his admiration for LSU.
“They really don’t have any weaknesses," Cumbie said, calling Tigers QB Garrett Nussmeier “probably the best quarterback in the country."
“In all these games, your margin for error is very small and you have to maximize your opportunities," Cumbie said, referencing Northern Illinois' upset at Notre Dame last season. "And how we do that is to be our best.”
Although the Southeastern Conference is expanding its league schedule from eight to nine games in 2026, Kelly said he believed that still left for one or two LSU matchups against fellow Louisiana programs each year.
“I would be in favor of that and hope that we do," Kelly said.
Cumbie said he, too, hoped that Louisiana's lone power conference team would continue to schedule other in-state programs.
“If you look at our roster and their roster, there’s a lot of kids on our team that played park ball with these guys ... and they competed with them in high school," Cumbie said, adding that the relative familiarity of players with one another gives the matchup “an extra added level of excitement.”
Nussmeier backed up the preseason hype about his Heisman Trophy candidacy in LSU's opener at Clemson, passing for 230 yards and a touchdown without a turnover in a high-profile win.
Tech QB Trey Kukuk passed for 130 yards and a TD without a turnover and rushed for 48 yards in a 24-0 victory over Southeastern Louisiana last week.
Kelly said LSU's defense will be "challenged to stop the quarterback in the quarterback run.”
Cumbie hopes that's the case.
“Trey has a great amount of athletic ability, really good pocket awareness and an ability to keep plays alive," Cumbie said. "And you’ll definitely have to use that Saturday night.”
Louisiana Tech starting linebacker Kolbe Fields transferred from LSU.
“He's really excited for this game," fellow Bulldogs linebacker Mekhi Mason said. "I'm going to let him display that on the field.”
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