Aggies, Tigers follow different trajectories
BATON ROUGE, La. — In another world and just north of Lake Pontchartrain, a pint-sized Nick Starkel would visit Ed Orgeron’s home to play with Orgeron’s sons, Parker and Cody.
“So proud to see him grow up,” said Orgeron, now LSU’s coach, of Texas A&M’s new starting quarterback.
Starkel and his new maroon-minded friends will visit Orgeron’s much larger house of Tiger Stadium on Saturday, where one of the nation’s hardest environments on visitors has replaced the soft-baked cookies of yesteryear.
“This game means a lot,” LSU defensive lineman Rashard Lawrence said. “We were at rock bottom earlier this year, we know that and everybody knows that. It’s important to finish big.”
The Tigers’ rock bottom was a home loss to Troy on Sept. 30. LSU, ranked 18th, has won five of six since, with the lone setback a 2410 loss at top-ranked Alabama.
LSU (8-3, 5-2) has been downright inhospitable to A&M (7-4, 4-3) in the five years since the Aggies exited the Big 12 and joined the SEC, whether at home or on the road. It is one of the biggest reasons Saturday’s regular-season finale will be sixth-year coach Kevin Sumlin’s final game with A&M, according to multiple people with knowledge of the situation.
“I don’t know why we haven’t beaten LSU,” Sumlin said this week when asked. “Every game is different, and each game has a different reason. The bottom line is we haven’t won … and it’s the results that matter.”
Beginning of the end?
Last year’s loss to the Tigers was one of the first two of about six nails in the coffin of the Sumlin-era in College Station.
Orgeron was LSU’s interim coach on the Thanksgiving night the Tigers marched into Kyle Field and embarrassed the Aggies 54-39, in running all over former LSU coordinator John Chavis’ backpedaling defense.
LSU running back Derrius Guice rushed for a school-record 285 yards, and Chavis’s A&M tenure took one of its many hits helping lead to Sumlin’s ultimate dismissal.
Despite A&M allowing more than 50 points to an otherwise ordinary LSU team a year ago, the Aggies’ last trip to Baton Rouge two years ago was even more out of the ordinary. ThenTigers coach Les Miles was on his way out — all the way until he wasn’t.
After LSU defeated A&M 19-7 in Tiger Stadium, LSU athletic director Joe Alleva appeared at an awkward postgame news conference.
“I want to make it very clear that Les Miles is our football coach and will continue to be our football coach,” Alleva said at the time. “We are committed to working together and competing at the highest level. We’re going to go forward and win championships here at LSU.”
The Tigers then started last season 2-2 and Miles was fired a third of the way into the regular season and replaced by Orgeron, who was named permanent coach after the Tigers’ whipping of the Aggies. With Sumlin on his way out regardless of Saturday’s outcome, plenty of observers figure the Aggies will play with loads of emotion in Tiger Stadium.
Too little, too late
A week ago, Sumlin won his first SEC West November game in more than three years, when the Aggies won at Mississippi. That moved Sumlin’s overall mark in division play to 16-19, and he gets another chance to improve it by a game Saturday.
“I’m in the process of working on winning this week,” Sumlin said when asked a bigger-picture question about his A&M tenure. “What this team has done is focus on what’s important in this building. As a coach or as a player, you can’t worry about what people say.
“What you can worry about is the response of your team and how they perform. That’s where my focus is right now.”