It was a tale of two halves on Saturday night inside Death Valley. But LSU came out of the locker room to start the second half with a dominating performance on both sides of the ball to come away with a 45-10 win over Southern Miss.
The Golden Eagles started things off with the ball and it looked like LSU would force them to punt, but an illegal substitution wound up making it first down for Southern Miss. They would take advantage of this scoring the first points with Ito Smith got into the endzone thanks to a big push from the offensive line to make it 7-0.
LSU would tie things up a couple of drives later with DJ Chark running off the jet sweep 19 yards into the endzone. They would take the lead for the first time after forcing a three-and-out with Colby Delahoussaye nailing a 38-yarder to take a three point lead. This was a season long for the senior kicker.
But the Golden Eagles got things tied up with an eleven play drive that was capped off by Shaunfield nailing one from 37 yards. This would be the score heading into the locker room, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long.
LSU would start the second half with the ball and wasted no time at all getting a touchdown with Derrius Guice getting a good block and turned on the jets for a 61-yard touchdown to make it 17-10 with only 90 seconds taken off the clock.
Jamal Adams would continue giving LSU the energy it needed after a slow first half with a fumble recovery at the 26-yard line of Southern Miss. Only two plays later, Guice found the endzone once again to increase their lead.
Later in the quarter LSU had another quick touchdown with Etling connecting with Chark and he took it to the house for and 80 yard touchdown. But they weren’t done yet as they Etling found Malachi Dupre wide open and threw the deep ball for another touchdown to increase their sizable lead.
Etling would put the final nail in the coffin with a 23-yard pass to Dupre in the endzone.
LSU (4-2, 2-1 SEC) begin the toughest part of their schedule against Ole Miss (3-3, 1-2 SEC) with kickoff set for 8 pm.
-Clint Domingue