Arkansas-LSU: It’s now nothing more than just another game
By Harry King
Wednesday, November 26, 2008 10:52 AM CST
LITTLE ROCK — Those who sort through the circumstances to identify the football team with the mental edge will run up the white flag when it comes to Arkansas vs. LSU.
Even payback for the Razorbacks’ victory last year in Baton Rouge doesn’t hold up because the Tigers still wound up with the crystal football that goes to the national champion. Such motivation is overrated, anyway. For athletes who care, winning and losing should be incentive enough.
Leading up to the Arkansas game at Starkville, Mississippi State tailback Anthony Dixon said it was not difficult to be ready for the Razorbacks even though the MSU season was a lost cause. He described himself as a competitor and added, “I’m never trying to get embarrassed when I get out there on the field.”
On Saturday, Dixon backed that up with a career-high 179 yards and his Bulldogs beat an Arkansas team with goals to be had.
Nobody will mistake any member of our golfers for an athlete, but there’s not one of the eight who wants to pay up at the end of a $1 Nassau on Sunday morning. We compete for the sake of the competition. The Razorbacks and the Tigers should do the same on Friday in Little Rock.
For LSU, it’s probably a post-season trip to Atlanta win or lose. The fact that there is a bowl game in the Georgia Dome will be news to some of the young Tigers who thought the site was reserved for the SEC championship game.
For Arkansas, there will be no bowl game, and the only tangible goal is to avoid being the only team that is 1-7 in SEC play.
If LSU coach Les Miles has access to the post-game quotes from Starkville, they will shape his game plan. If not, he can watch Dixon’s highlight film.
After the 31-28 loss, Bobby Petrino said he knew during the week that his Razorbacks were in deep against MSU.
“They are a smash mouth team that likes to run the ball and we knew it was not going to be a good matchup for us,” he said.
If that and Dixon’s big day aren’t enough, there was South Carolina’s performance against the Razorbacks two weeks earlier. The only team in the SEC averaging less than 100 yards per game on the ground, the Gamecocks ran for 132 against Arkansas.
The loss of quarterback Jarrett Lee could hasten the Tigers’ embrace of run-run-run. Lee went down in the second quarter of the Ole Miss loss and was replaced by Jordan Jefferson. The freshman is more of a runner than Lee and Miles said Monday that he is excited to see what Jefferson can do.
Better equipped on defense than Arkansas, Ole Miss ganged up to stop the run and neither Lee nor Jefferson could throw well enough to discourage such tactics.
As a result, 1,000-yard rusher Charles Scott netted a measly 10 yards on 10 tries. In fact, Jefferson had 23 of the Tigers’ total of 37 yards rushing.
Just last week, the league office noted that no conference plays defense better than the SEC. League defenses are No. 1 in the nation at limiting yards per rush as well as yards per pass. Against the rush, the average for the 12 teams was 3.55. Arkansas giving up 4.5 yards per run — that’s nine yards in two plays. Only Auburn and Mississippi State are above 3.8 and each is 4.0.
“It will be really interesting to see how this team responds,” Miles said after the loss to Ole Miss.
Petrino could parrot that take.
Harry King is sports columnist for Stephens Media’s Arkansas News Bureau. His e-mail address is hking@arkansasnews.com.
