LSU just won by 31 points, but head coach Lane Kiffin wasn’t satisfied with the results as the team started slow. After the Tigers beat Louisiana Tech (45-14), Kiffin focused on the turnovers and missed chances that the team failed to capitalize on. He was blunt with his warning to quarterback Sam Leavitt and other players: not to lower the program’s standards based on the scoreboard.
Watch What’s Trending Now!
“Sam’s gotta do a better job taking care of the ball,” Kiffin said during the post-game press conference, according to an X post by Jacques Doucet. “We made a lot of yards, and we were smooth through that at times, but obviously the red zone is where you gotta finish drives. So maybe it was perfect for us that we needed something like that, ’cause it’s a game we play good on offense in games.”
Taking Week 1’s 51-10 performance against Clemson into context, perhaps the team didn’t establish the same standing, with a slightly reduced margin. Moreover, LSU’s four turnovers in the first half of the game are tough to ignore.
“Seventy to seven or something, then we don’t have their attention. So, maybe it’s what we needed,” Kiffin continued in the X post clip. “And we’re in a good place. If we’re winning by thirty-one points and we’re really upset, we’ve got a good standard going.”
LSU’s offense struggled badly in the first half, with Leavitt throwing three interceptions. Kiffin pointed out the contrast between both sides of the ball, where defense was faring well, and offense was struggling to gain momentum from the start, missing many opportunities to score.
“One side we’re playing great, the other side we’re not,” Kiffin said, according to Hunter Hodies of The Big Lead.
At half-time, the scoreline read 10-7 in LSU’s favor. In the second half, though, the Tigers looked like a different offense, scoring 28 straight points to take control of the game.
Leavitt added two rushing touchdowns and connected with Trey’Dez Green for another 10-yard score. The second-half turnaround secured the 31-point win, but Kiffin expects a cleaner performance when he returns to Oxford for the Tigers’ SEC opener against Ole Miss on September 19.
Kiffin praised the Bulldogs’ defense after they put up 80 points in the season opener against Northwestern State. But he was far more critical of LSU’s own mistakes.
The Tigers turned the ball over four times and reached the red zone 10 times, yet they came away empty-handed on the two trips with two interceptions. Despite putting up 528 yards, those missed chances were what left Kiffin “really disappointing there.”
“Credit to La Tech, you know, those guys did a really good job defensively of playing really hard,” Kiffin said. “They were sticky last year here in the stadium, and how they played, I think twenty-three points and a good red zone drive at the end of that game, so, we gotta execute better.”
Kiffin praised the Tigers’ defense, noting that the unit controlled the game from the start. He pointed to the team’s first-team defense’s dominance, including holding the Bulldogs to negative rushing yards.
Kiffin was impressed with the consistent pressure on the quarterback that it felt like a turnover could come on every possession.
Though LSU is at 2-0, Kiffin is not letting his team get comfortable, as the Tigers head to Oxford for the Week 3 matchup against the Rebels, who are 2-0 after two weeks themselves.
If LSU wants to come away with another win, the offense needs to clean up the mistakes of the last two games, as four turnovers could prove far more costly than they were against Louisiana Tech.