Inside Slant

The Sports Xchange

October 29, 2018 at 8:55 pm.

No. 4 LSU gets its shot at No.1 Alabama

LSU coach Ed Orgeron didn’t try to con anyone.

He could have lapsed into coach-speak and said this week’s game is “just another game” or maybe the most important game only because “it’s the next one on the schedule.”

But he acknowledged the obvious: this week’s game isn’t just another game and it’s important because it’s the Alabama game. Plain and simple.

The No. 4 Tigers (7-1, 4-1) and the No. 1 Crimson Tide (8-0, 5-0) meet Saturday night in Tiger Stadium and there’s lots at stake. The winner will be the team to beat in the SEC West and will be on its way to a CFP berth if it can keep on winning.

“We’re not going to say it’s like every other game,” Orgeron said Monday at his weekly news conference. “We understand this is ‘the’ game.”

But, Orgeron added, the Tigers will prepare for this game the way they have prepared for the previous eight.

“Now, when it comes down to game time, there’s going to be an excitement in the air that’s going to be different for this game,” he said. “This just happens this way. That’s how it is LSU versus Alabama. There’s nothing I need to say or do this week to get these guys fired up.”

Both teams had an open date last week to heal up and get a head-start in preparations for this week.

The Crimson Tide (8-0) have won each of their games handily, but Orgeron hopes the Tigers can put Alabama in a more stressful situation than it has experienced so far this season.

“Listen,” Orgeron said, “you come into Tiger Stadium, it’s loud. You’re going to be under some stress. Play our defense, you’re going to be under some stress. We expect this to be an exciting game, match-up. We expect this to be a battle for 60 minutes. There’s going to be stress on both sides.”

This game will take place just three weeks after LSU played the other participant in last year’s national championship game, knocking off then-No. 2 Georgia 36-16 in Tiger Stadium.

“We know this as a football team: we have to be hungry, we have to play our best to play with anybody, and when we do play our best we can play with anybody,” Orgeron said. “We have gone out and played a complete game against some teams, and we have seen the results.

“We’ve gone out and kind of misfired, struggled a little bit, didn’t win against Florida when we should have won that game. I feel like we were the better football team. We’ve gone out and played some lesser opponents, kind of played to their level, and the game didn’t look as good as we wanted. I think this team is mature enough to understand that all they got to do is play their best to beat Alabama. If we play our best, we’re capable of doing that. We feel that already. Now we have to go out and do it.”

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