No. 1 LSU Rolls Again, Beats Vols 38-7 at BetLM

No. 1 LSU Rolls Again, Beats Vols 38–7

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. —Even when top-ranked LSU isn’t play­ing its best, the Tigers are still find­ing ways to dom­i­nate games.

Jar­rett Lee and LSU got off to a slower start than usual against Ten­nessee but wore the Vol­un­teers down in a 38–7 vic­tory on Sat­ur­day. It was a record sixth straight vic­tory over a South­east­ern Con­fer­ence East Divi­sion oppo­nent for the Tigers, and their sev­enth con­sec­u­tive win by a double-digit margin.

“I felt like we did what we needed to do,” LSU coach Les Miles said. “It wasn’t our best game, but we did what we had to do to ensure vic­tory. Our defense gave us turnovers and the oppor­tu­ni­ties to take the oppo­nent out. Our offense late in the game gave us the foot­ball and ate up the time of pos­ses­sion and scored.”

It marked a depar­ture in the series between the two teams in which three of the last four games have been decided by a touch­down or less, includ­ing last year’s bizarre fin­ish in Baton Rouge when LSU scored the win­ning touch­down after the game was extended by a Ten­nessee penalty for too many men on the field.

Matt Simms, mak­ing his first start of the sea­son for Ten­nessee in place of the injured Tyler Bray, was 6 of 20 for 128 yards and two inter­cep­tions against one of the nation’s best defense.

Twice LSU (7–0, 4–0) started dri­ves on Tennessee’s side of the field, and both times the Tigers turned the field posi­tion into touchdowns.

“It wasn’t a really com­plex game,” Ten­nessee coach Derek Doo­ley said. “In the first half, I thought we com­peted our tails off and had a cou­ple of real bad mis­takes that was ulti­mately the dif­fer­ence in the first half. In the sec­ond half, we had a cou­ple of third-down oppor­tu­ni­ties where we didn’t exe­cute and they pounded us. I don’t know any other way to say it.”

The Vols had crossed mid­field when Simms con­nected with Rajion Neal on a 38-yard pass that was ruled out of bounds but over­turned on review. On the next play, Simms aimed deep for Da’Rick Rogers but hit LSU’s Mor­ris Clai­borne instead.

Clai­borne returned the inter­cep­tion 89 yards, but Zach Rogers caught up with him at the Ten­nessee 5. It was LSU’s longest non-scoring inter­cep­tion return ever and longest return over­all since Greg Jackson’s 100-yard return in 1988 against Mis­sis­sippi State.

On sec­ond down, Lee hit Rueben Ran­dle for a 5-yard touch­down to give the Tigers a 7–0 lead with 14:56 in the sec­ond quarter.

Ten­nessee (3–3, 0–3) started the next drive on its own 11 and went back­ward. Odell Beck­ham Jr. returned Michael Palardy’s 42-yard punt to the Ten­nessee 36.

On third-and-11 at the Vols 13, Ten­nessee blitz and Lee lobbed a screen pass to Spencer Ware, who went 13 yards for a score to give LSU a 14–0 lead with 10:01 in the sec­ond quar­ter. The Tigers’ Drew Alle­man tacked on an 18-yard field goal with 15 sec­onds before halftime.

Lee fin­ished 10 of 14 for 115 yards, Ware ran for 80 yards and a score, Jor­dan Jef­fer­son added 73 yards rush­ing and a touch­down on 14 car­ries and Ran­dle had 86 yards receiv­ing and a touch­down. Michael Ford and Rus­sell Shep­ard also ran for scores.

Aside from LSU’s 99 yards on inter­cep­tion returns, the teams played almost evenly through the first half.

The Vols kept from falling apart, even as Simms threw another inter­cep­tion mid­way through the sec­ond quar­ter. Tennessee’s defense held LSU after the pick, and the offense put together an 80-yard drive.

Simms threw a 44-yard pass to Da’Rick Rogers, who dragged LSU’s Tyrann Math­ieu the last 10 yards of the play, and Tau­ren Poole cov­ered 28 yards on seven plays before punch­ing the ball in the end zone on a 2-yard run that cut the Tigers’ lead to 14–7 with 2:24 before halftime.

But LSU’s many weapons on both sides of the field got to be too much for the Vols after half­time. LSU fin­ished with 383 yards to Tennessee’s 239, picked up 13 more first downs and held the ball over 16 min­utes longer than the Vols.

“Our run­ning game is really strong right now, and our offen­sive line is block­ing so well and play­ing smart foot­ball,” Lee said. “We’re keep­ing the ball in our hands and it’s help­ing us right now.”

Ware ran 1 yard for a touch­down to make it 24–7 with 7:53 in the third quarter.

“By the way (the Vols) were putting their hands on the ground, I could tell they were get­ting a lit­tle fatigued,” Ware said. “We were hav­ing fun. When you’re hav­ing fun, it makes it that much easier.”

The run­ning game was a sur­pris­ing bright spot for the Vols, who last week Bray to a bro­ken thumb.

After los­ing a com­bined 29 yards in losses to Florida and Geor­gia, Ten­nessee gained 111 yards on the ground against the fourth best run defense in the nation.

“We have had prob­lems in the run­ning game, but we just tried to put it on our back as an offen­sive line, hit them in the mouth and try to build momen­tum,” Ten­nessee offen­sive tackle Ja’Wuan James said. “We left the first half with some momen­tum. We need to keep push­ing each other and exe­cute in the sec­ond half.”

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