The transitive property had already been shot, buried, dug up, and buried again by South Carolina, Missouri, and Indiana earlier this season. And granted, we’ve known since the beginning that it was never as useful as we wish it would be in figuring out who’s better among Team A, Team B, and Team C.
5 lessons from Ole Miss’ loss to LSU in Baton Rouge
A single loss in the SEC West (especially in Baton Rouge) does not deter your national hopes much, but Ole Miss’ 10-7 stumble in Death Valley means the Rebels have no margin for error heading into November.
But in case you still wanted to find value in all things transitive, some important SEC games tried as hard as they could to knock that out of your brain.
- September 20, Mississippi State outgains LSU by 140 yards in Baton Rouge and takes a 34-10 lead early in the fourth quarter before the Tigers make a late surge to respectability and a 34-29 loss.
- October 18, LSU absolutely destroys Kentucky, nearly doubling up the Wildcats in yardage and cruising to a 41-3 win.
- October 25, Kentucky outdoes Mississippi State play-for-play, averaging 6.6 yards to MSU’s 6.5, and gets to within 38-31 of the No. 1 Bulldogs until MSU returns an onside kick for a touchdown with 2:22 left. Meanwhile, LSU beats another undefeated Magnolia state squad. The Tigers best Ole Miss, 10-7. Ole Miss’ win probability heading into the game: 87 percent. Mississippi State’s: 98 percent.
If you’re still a believer in anything other than Lou Holtz’s “you’re a different team every week” theory, I don’t know what to tell you.
The flow of a college football season tends to feature a mix of reruns ("The One Where Alabama's Still Really Good," "The One Where Michigan State Whomps Michigan") and new, strange plot lines. Easily the most original episode to emerge from this season so far was the synchronized eruption of both Mississippi schools, Mississippi State and Ole Miss. The former came into Week 9 the top-ranked team in the polls, the latter the best team in the F/+ rankings.
We could still be very much on track for the Egg Bowl to end all Egg Bowls, but Ole Miss’ margin for error was eliminated on Saturday night in Baton Rouge (LSU 10, Rebels 7), and Mississippi State showed that it is far from flawless in Lexington (MSU 45, Kentucky 31). State survived, however, so we’ll save them for another week. Let’s talk about five things we learned from Ole Miss’ Saturday night loss in Death Valley.
1. Hey, Bad Bo
It almost felt mean that we kept bringing it up. Bo Wallace is a three-year starting quarterback and had led his team to a 7-0 start and the cusp of the No. 1 ranking. He had 251 yards with three touchdowns and no interceptions against Alabama three weeks ago. He had his sketchy moments against Boise State and Memphis (six touchdowns, five interceptions), and he was far from dominant against Tennessee. But he was passing tests, and the offense he helmed was scoring points and getting out of the way of a terrifying Ole Miss defense.
But we've seen Bad Bo just enough to worry about his return, and there wasn't much good about Wallace's performance on Saturday night. The Rebels' defense needed the offense to give them just 14 points of support, but Wallace's O could give only seven. Wallace completed just 14 of 33 passes, and while a lot of that had to do with the LSU secondary -- 13 of his 19 incompletions were defensed (three by Jamal Adams, three by Jalen Collins, two by Ronald Martin, who also forced a fumble), meaning Ole Miss receivers had no separation whatsoever from LSU defenders -- his last pass of the night was crippling.
One of many reasons to love college football is the mix of 22-man, chess-level strategic complexity and the generally flawed decision-making of 18- to 22-year olds. Faced with a bit of a problem -- needing a true freshman kicker to make a 47-yard field goal (it was 42 before a delay-of-game penalty) with nine seconds left in front of more than 102,000 fans, coaches, players, and media personnel, all from the right hash -- Ole Miss head coach Hugh Freeze came up with a solution: roll Wallace left and have him throw into the flats. The given receiver gets out of bounds with probably two or three seconds left, and you kick a shorter field goal from the preferred left hash. Makes sense! (Freeze: “I thought we were pretty clear.”)
Only, Wallace spotted Cody Core sprinting toward the end zone in what he apparently saw as favorable one-on-one coverage. So he went for the win instead of a potential game-tying field goal. And he didn't see safety Ronald Martin roaming, ready to pounce. Martin stepped in front of the well-covered Core, and kicker Gary Wunderlich missed out on an opportunity to become hero/goat.
2. Injuries hurt
Part of the cruelty of a 12-game regular-season schedule, as opposed to 16, 30, 80, 82, or 162, is that it only takes a couple of ill-timed injuries to change the complexion of your season.
There's nothing saying that Ole Miss playing at times without defensive tackle Robert Nkemdiche, safety Cody Prewitt, offensive tackle Laremy Tunsil, linebacker Denzel Nkemdiche, and center Ben Still made the difference in the game. Any coach (or opposing fan) will tell you that talking about injuries is simply making excuses, and that you have to have your backups prepared to play well, too.
Still ... that's a lot for Ole Miss to lose in what was probably the toughest road trip of the year. Tunsil returned after missing part of the third quarter, and Still was a known loss before the game started. But Robert Nkemdiche and Prewitt are the two most important players, when it comes to the Land Shark identity the Rebels have crafted. Neither was on the field for what eventually became LSU's game-winning, fourth-quarter touchdown drive.
3. Young teams improve (if you’re lucky)
We knew three things about LSU heading into 2014: A) The Tigers were going to be young, with either a first- or second-year quarterback, a brand new receiving corps, and a new set of defensive tackles. B) The Tigers were going to have some serious ball hawks in the secondary. C) They were going to run the ball as much as humanly possible.
You can build a pretty strong identity around (B) and (C) if (A) doesn’t trip you up too much. But the Tigers were whipped by two far more experienced teams -- Mississippi State and Auburn -- in the first six weeks of the season. MSU went up big before the aforementioned LSU comeback, and Auburn didn’t allow any hope of a comeback in a 41-7 pasting at Jordan-Hare Stadium.
It looked like Les Miles' squad was in for a frustrating season, but you don't always have to wait until the offseason for youth to become experience. Following the disastrous trip to Auburn, LSU survived a trip to Gainesville (Tigers 30, Florida 27), then crushed Kentucky. And on Saturday, their secondary, run game, and big-play potential were able to overcome another sketchy performance from sophomore quarterback Anthony Jennings (8-for-16, one touchdown, two interceptions). Four of Jennings' eight completions gained at least 20 yards, and he was only asked to attempt 16 passes because LSU was running, running, and running.
Heading into the game, Hugh Freeze said that he was curious how his team would handle an LSU offense that simply tries to "lean on you" for 60 minutes. The Rebels held up for the most part, but LSU had just enough success to keep leaning. And with some injured defensive stars out late in the game, the run picked up steam. LSU's game-winning touchdown drive featured 12 consecutive runs before a short, play-action touchdown pass. And for the game, backs Leonard Fournette, Terrence Magee, and Kenny Hilliard combined for 47 carries and 250 yards, plus four catches for 86 yards. Eighty-three percent of LSU's yardage came on the legs of these three.
4. It’s not over for Ole Miss
In theory, we’ll find out more about Ole Miss’ injuries -- who will and won’t be ready for the Auburn game, in other words -- early this week. (Then again, coaches are getting more annoying and secretive about injuries, so maybe we won’t.) Regardless, if the Rebels are something approximating full-strength moving forward, all of their season goals are still on the table. The only road trip left on the schedule is one to Fayetteville on November 22; Arkansas is still a tricky, physical team, but the Hogs aren’t quite as imposing as we thought they might be a few weeks ago.
Our blogs on these schools
Meanwhile, there are still two huge games left on the schedule, but both Auburn (on November 1) and Mississippi State (November 29) must visit Oxford. That makes the Rebels favorites for both games, and it gives us a reminder that their strength of schedule and quality wins quotients will be more than strong enough to earn one of the top two seeds in the College Football Playoff if they are to finish 12-1. [Insert incredibly-cliched-but-still-accurate “Man, the SEC West gauntlet is brutal” comment here.]
Ole Miss would have preferred to save its mulligan for November, but that’s life. If they are the team they have spent most of the first eight games of the season convincing us they are, they’ll overcome this. And if this loss forces a downward spiral of sorts, then that was probably going to happen eventually, win or lose in Baton Rouge.
The injuries are a little bit scary, as was the late-game return of Bad Bo. But this is still easily one of the best teams in the conference, and with the magnitude of improvement LSU has shown over the last two weeks, this might look like more and more of a forgivable loss moving forward.
5. History is never past
Fantastic Ole Miss team powered by a dominant defense but done in by a single touchdown and late offensive failures near Halloween in Baton Rouge? I think that might have happened before.
See More:
