Syracuse vs. LSU 2017 live stream: Game time and how to watch online

The LSU Tigers plummeted to 25th in the AP Poll after a blowout road loss to Mississippi State. They’ll try to get back on track when the Syracuse Orange come to Death Valley at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN2 (WatchESPN).

Things could not have gone much worse for the Tigers in their trip to Starkville last week. The Bulldogs dominated them in in nearly every phase of the game en route to a 37-7 win, racking up 465 total yards on offense and holding star running back Derrius Guice to just 76 yards on 15 carries.

LSU got potentially bad news when Guice injured his knee late in the loss, but it’s not believed to be serious. After initially ruling him out, head coach Ed Orgeron revealed that Gruice will play against Syracuse, although he’ll likely be in a limited role. The Tigers will be in trouble if Guice’s injury lingers into SEC play, so they’ll probably try to take it easy on him against a lesser opponent in the Orange.

Syracuse is in the middle of a rebuild in coach Dion Barber’s second season. They finished 4-8 last season and haven’t made a bowl game since 2013, so expectations aren’t necessarily high. The Orange are having an up-and-down 2017 so far, starting off 2-1 but suffering a home loss to Middle Tennessee State. Last week they had an early 17-10 deficit to Central Michigan, but scored 31 unanswered points for a comfortable win.

Getting the win in Baton Rouge might be asking too much, but if the Orange hang in there and keep things competitive, that could bode well for their chances of ending the bowl drought.

And The Valley Shook takes a look at watch to watch for from LSU’s perspective:

When I talk about a Get Right Game, I mean that the how matters as much, if not more, than the actual result. Specifically, using the game to work on the problems that have emerged, at least in as far as the ones that can be worked around.

“Work on” being the operative term, because you’re not going to fix everything in one week — certainly not everything that we saw last Saturday in Starkville. And pressing to do so is only going to compound the mental errors, make this game tighter than it needs to be and play into everything that could give the Orange a shot to pull the upset.

ATVS comes to grips with the Mississippi State loss and Coach O’s future with the program.

The best course of action ... heck, the only course of action, is to ride this one out and throw all of our collective resources behind the coach. He needs a united fanbase behind him to help with recruiting and to preserve Tiger Stadium as a feared place to play. We need to help hold the locker room together. A fractured fanbase only makes things worse.

The Syracuse preview from Troy Nunes is an Absolute Magician focuses on the trench battles.

One of the big reasons for LSU’s surprising 37-7 loss to Mississippi State last week was that the line simply got bullied by the Bulldogs’ run game. That’ll happen when you’re thin in the defensive trenches, and then things go from bad to worse. The Tigers have one nose tackle (Greg Gilmore) with Ed Alexander injured. Defensive end Neil Farrell will miss the first half. Rashard Lawrence is questionable. Frank Herron’s also likely out at end.

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But the size and speed [Syracuse] faced in the first three games are nothing like what they’ll face in LSU’s blue-chip defenders. Even without much depth to lean on, the Tigers will be able to present a formidable pass rush and pull in linebackers (like Corey Thompson) to help aid the pressure. When Scott Shafer mixed things up similarly with MTSU’s defense, the results were unfortunate at best for the Orange. Syracuse will likely be dragging in an additional body like Chris Elmore or Ravian Pierce most downs to account for the rush and help Dungey get more time to release the football.

Even with Guice hobbled by injury, this one shouldn’t be close. If the Tigers struggle to put Syracuse away, there will be even more reason to worry.

Bill Connelly’s S+P+ projections give LSU a 36-18 win.