Just two weeks after losing to Troy at home, the LSU Tigers are ranked again. In order to keep their place in the top 25, they’re going to have to avoid a letdown against a familiar opponent — the Ole Miss Rebels. The two teams kick off an SEC showdown Saturday evening at 7:15 p.m. ET, broadcast live on ESPN (live stream).
LSU knocked off Auburn at home to end the (other) Tigers’ College Football Playoff aspirations — for now at least. That, coupled with a win over Florida, was enough to wash away the taste of the Trojans surprising win in Baton Rouge and push Ed Orgeron’s team back into the national consciousness. Mississippi is coming off a strong win of its own, dropping 57 points on Vanderbilt to notch its first conference win.
Time, TV channel, and streaming info
- Time: 7:15 p.m. ET
- Location: Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, Oxford, Miss.
- TV: ESPN
- Streaming: WatchESPN
- Odds: LSU is favored by 7 points.
LSU at Ole Miss news:
- LSU trailed Auburn 20-0 last week. It didn’t matter, because an Ed Orgeron-led team knows nothing but chaos:
The No. 10 Auburn Tigers were upset by LSU, 27-23 on Saturday, thanks to a 20-point comeback from Ed Orgeron’s team in Tiger Stadium. This means a huge boost of confidence in what Coach O’s doing, but just looking at the numbers, this was an incredible comeback.
In fact, Auburn had a damn 96 percent chance of winning the game when it went up 20-0 in the second quarter.
- Mississippi has one less thing to worry about after Ole Miss settled its lawsuit with former head coach Houston Nutt:
“Certain statements made by University employees in January 2016 appear to have contributed to misleading media reports about Coach Nutt,” Ole Miss said in a statement without a specific name attached. “To the extent any such statements harmed Coach Nutt’s reputation, the University apologizes, as this was not the intent.”
- So how did the Tigers come back to beat Auburn? They had a little help from their competition:
I think Bill Connelly summed it up well in the Podcast Ain’t Played Nobody S&P Recap Show when he said “When you go up big you say ‘alright cool we got it’ and then disengage. And then after that, you can’t re-engage.”
- Against Vanderbilt, Ole Miss football finally looked like itself again:
The Rebels were finally clicking on both sides of the ball, racking up 603 yards while preventing the Commodores from going into ball-control mode. They showed why they rank fourth nationally in explosiveness, and while the defense was far from perfect, they created plenty of chances for a potent offense to do damage.
Which team’s revival is for real?
OK, calling Ole Miss’s rout of a terrible Vandy defense a “revival” may be a bit much, but the Rebels have been playing better football the past two weeks as they crawl toward December. They have the talent to give LSU a challenge — especially when you consider Troy’s roster of two- and three-star recruits was able to. The Tigers, on the other hand, are loaded with skilled players and used that edge to skim past Florida and Auburn in razor-thin decisions. Can Coach O keep his blue-chip roster playing hard?
LSU at Ole Miss prediction:
The Tigers are doing their best to personify chaos in 2017. The Rebels squeak out a win at home, proving the SEC this fall is just Alabama, Georgia, and a Plinko board of falling chips to determine 3-14.