LSU heads into Saturday night’s matchup with McNeese carrying more than just a 3-1 record. The No. 11 Tigers are trying to steady themselves after a brutal stretch of injuries that has hit both sides of the ball, and that’s the real backdrop for this in-state meeting in Baton Rouge.
The list keeps growing. Top linebacker Whit Weeks broke his leg in LSU’s 35-6 win over visiting Texas A&M last Saturday and had surgery Monday, with no clear timeline for his return.
The Tigers also lost their top reserve linebacker, Charles Ross II, to a season-ending knee injury. A week earlier at Ole Miss, safety Dashawn Spears went down for the year, and tight end Trey'Dez Green, LSU’s top receiver, was knocked out indefinitely with a knee injury.
Quarterback Sam Leavitt also left the Texas A&M game bothered by a hamstring injury, and his status for Saturday remains uncertain. Even if he doesn’t play against McNeese, LSU is expecting him to be available next week when the Tigers go to Kentucky to open a seven-game SEC run that will close the regular season.
Lane Kiffin made it clear this week that the opponent isn’t the point.
"This is not disrespectful at all," Tigers head coach Lane Kiffin said. "This (week) is not about the opponent. This is really about us practicing really well and going and playing really well and not looking at who we're playing and what division and all those things.
"(The Cowboys) play hard and have good players. This is much more about us playing really well and the challenge to us all week to get better on fundamentals."
Kiffin said the injuries can’t simply be waved away with the usual “next man up” line.
"The coach's job is to find a way to get other players, get different schemes, get different things to overcome injuries," he said. "It's a challenge."
LSU already got a glimpse of that response in its first full game without Green, when Jackson Harris and Winston Watkins Jr. both topped 100 receiving yards. Harris finished with six catches for 163 yards and two touchdowns, while Watkins had five receptions for 107 yards.
The challenge for McNeese is steep, too. The Cowboys enter at 2-3 and will see an LSU defense that ranks No. 3 nationally in yards allowed per game at 226.8, No. 2 against the run at 47.5 yards per game and No. 2 in sacks with 18.
McNeese coach Matt Viator framed the game the same way Kiffin did: as an internal test.
"It's 100 percent about us," Viator said. "My philosophy has been, like I told our players, No. 1 it's a challenge and No. 2 it's an opportunity and you have to look at it that way. It's a huge challenge.
"We're going to do what we do regardless of what week it is. We're going to prepare and we're going to go down there and play as hard as we can. We've got to come back from Baton Rouge a better football team than when we left because we've still got another half of a season to play."
McNeese’s campus in Lake Charles is about a two-hour bus ride east to LSU’s campus. The teams last met in 2010 and 2021, and LSU won both of those games.
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