Victory Is Mine

LSU - ASU recap

First of all, wow.

Second of all, WOW.

That was probably the best game I've ever attended, even though all of it happened in the last quarter.

I am really, REALLY on the ASU bandwagon right now. That was as impressive a performance as I've seen in awhile by a quarterback. True, a chunk of Sam Keller's yards were on simple screens but he floated that ball into so many holes in our zone defense I was stunned. 461 yards and 4 TDs, why hasn't this guy been in the national discussion? I'm looking at The Sporting News' preseason player rankings, and Keller isn't even in their top 20. Guarantee you he is now. I will be paying attention to this team every week from here on out, and I cannot wait until they host USC in a few weeks.

Meanwhile, I am going to have to put everything I think about Bo Pelini on hold. We got shredded. No question about it. Hopefully we can learn how to defend that screen, and maybe start blitzing a little more (the few occasions I noticed that we did, it seemed to work pretty well, though the ASU fullbacks did a great job of picking up blitzes in the 2nd half).

Positives I took away:

1) Jamarcus Russell is a stud. He was calm and didn't get rattled, and his stats would have been far better if his receivers (notably Doucet) didn't have as many drops as they did. Thankfully, Doucet made it up entirely on the last drive with 3 catches, including the game-winning TD.

2) Our running game worked beautifully. This was great to see, though ASU's defense isn't anything to write home about.

3) Our run defense was stellar.

4) The camera guys managed to find the row of ASU hotties in bikinis in the front row, and gave us gratuitous footage of them jumping every five minutes or so. Good times.

5) ASU fans were as graceful hosts as any I could imagine. Hats off to them. In fact, the stadium played LSU's Tiger Stadium video introduction after the ASU intros, which was nice (I have a picture, but am having trouble connecting to Hello right now so I can upload).

All in all, great little day in Tempe. Lots of Tigers fans showed up. We pregamed and postgamed with them. Tailgating in Tempe is really weak, and even the ASU fans admitted it.

Last note: with Notre Dame apparently for real now, USC's schedule doesn't look like quite as much of a cakewalk now. I can't wait till SC plays ASU (Oct 1) and Notre Dame (Oct 15). Those promise to be great fun.

posted by Publius @ 9:50 AM