No. 25 LSU picked up an embarrassing home loss to Troy on Saturday night to drop to 3-2 and snap a 49-game winning streak in Baton Rouge against non-conference oppoents. The Tigers trailed 24-7 in the fourth quarter and a late rally came up short in the 24-21 loss.
Troy holds off late rally to upset LSU in Baton Rouge
It took more than 40 minutes of game clock for LSU to score points against the Troy defense.
While the Tigers were shut out in the first half, the team wasn’t a disaster on offense and actually finished the game with more than 400 yards of offense.
Quarterback Danny Etling completed seven of his 11 passes in the first half for 61 yards, and LSU went to halftime with 97 yards rushing on 15 carries.
But five drives in the first half all ended without points for LSU, and a fumble on the first play from scrimmage set up Troy with a short field and an eventual 7-0 lead in the opening minutes of the game. The next drive for LSU ended with a turnover on downs.
The first scoring chance for LSU was late in the second quarter, but a 35-yard field goal went wide left and Troy hit a field goal to go to the locker room up 10-0. The kick before halftime wasn’t without controversy and came after a review determined the clock ran out instead of stopping at two seconds — forcing LSU players to come back out of the tunnel for one more play.
Troy kept the pressure on with a 74-yard run early in the second half that set up a fourth-and-goal touchdown that expanded the lead to 17-0.
The Tigers came close to responding with a long touchdown drive of their own, but a fumble near the goal line left LSU without points again.
When Troy fumbled a couple plays later, LSU finally got on the board with a 7-yard touchdown from Myles Brennan to Foster Moreau.
But the Trojans again took advantage of an LSU mishap when Brennan threw an interception to set up a lengthy touchdown drive that gave Troy a 24-7 lead with about eight minutes to play. It didn’t take LSU to respond with a 34-yard touchdown pass from Brennan to Russell Gage, and the Tigers scored again with less than two minutes remaining in the fourth quarter to cut the deficit to three.
An onside kick was unsuccessful and Troy ran the clock down to 18 seconds before LSU had another chance to touch the ball. But the last chance drive for the Tigers ended with an interception — LSU’s fourth turnover of the game — to put the game on ice.
LSU won its first two home games of the season over Chattanooga and Syracuse and added a neutral-site win in New Orleans over BYU, but the Tigers lost 37-7 on the road to Mississippi State. Troy opened the season with a 24-13 loss to Boise State but entered Saturday after three consecutive wins.
Meet Troy
The Trojans have an Air Raid offense led by Neal Brown — a former Kentucky wide receiver and offensive coordinator for Texas Tech and Kentucky. He became the head coach at Troy in 2015 and has quickly turned the program into a Sun Belt contender.
But Troy has been winning games without the typical gaudy numbers associated with Air Raid attacks.
“The way [Brown] was able to win as an ‘offensive’ coach last year being average on offense, and then to be able to win this year being at times below average on offense right now, to find a way to change your game plan and make adjustments and still win, that’s good coaching,” MTSU offensive coordinator Tony Franklin told SB Nation’s Steven Godfrey earlier in September.
LSU beat Troy in 2004 and 2008 — the only two meetings ever for the two schools — and entered Saturday as a nearly three-touchdown favorite against the visiting Trojans.
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