by Chris Macaluso
LSUsports.net
Season opening games against non-conference opponents usually give the host team a chance to flex its offensive muscles.
Not wanting to disappoint the more than 87,000 fans in Tiger Stadium Saturday night, the LSU offense stood at the top of the cliff, opened its shirt, let out a resounding yawp and beat its chest for 60 minutes.
The Tigers routed Division I-AA Western Carolina 58-0, amassing 680 total yards of offense, the second highest offensive output in school history.
“I was very much pleased with the performance of the team tonight,” first-year LSU Coach Nick Saban said. “We made a lot of big plays and had a lot of players contribute tonight”
A lot of players may be an understatement. Saban sent seven different Tigers to the field to run the ball, 10 different players made receptions and three Tiger quarterbacks called the signals.
Leading the Tigers on the ground was red shirt freshman LaBrandon Toefield who carried the ball 11 times for 51 yards and one touchdown. True freshmen Derron Parquet and Devrey Henderson added scores as well of three and 32 yards respectively.
“I was also pleased with the way we were able to run the ball as the game went on,” Saban said. “We had a lot of guys carry the ball. None of them carried it too much, but a lot of guys showed that they had some ability.”
In all, the Tigers tallied 195 yards on the ground. Toefield said it just felt good to get out on the field and show some people what the team is capable of.
“We’re not a bad offense,” he said. “We’re better than everybody thinks. It’s up to us to go out there and keep executing. If everybody stays healthy, we’ll have a pretty good offense.”
Perhaps even more impressive than the Tigers game on the ground was the LSU passing attack which ended the game with a school record 485 yards in the air. Mixed in those 485 yards were four plays of more than 40 yards and five touchdowns, including an 80 yard bomb from starting quarterback Josh Booty to wide out Reginald Robinson on just the third play of the game.
Booty finished the game completing 12 of 15 passes for a career high 291 yards and 2 TD’s. In Booty’s stead, back-up QB Rohan Davey completed all 11 passes he threw for 194 yards and 3 TD’s. Combined with two incompletions late from Craig Nall, the Tigers completed 23 of 28 passes for a school record 82.1 completion percentage.
Tiger receiver Jerel Myers finished with six catches for 117 yards while teammate Josh Reed hauled in five passes for 137 yards.
“We just wanted to go out there and establish ourselves and establish an identity,” Davey said. “We wanted to play hard from the first snap to the last snap.”
Saban said he was not surprised with efficiency with which his offense played. He said he expects his team to improve more and more as the season progresses.
“That’s how we expect them to play,” he said. “We had people open today. But I don’t expect it to be that easy in the future and we need to worry about making improvements and getting better as a team. Most good teams improve the most between the first and the second game. We’ve got 24 hours to enjoy this, then we better get on to the next one.”