By Chris Macaluso
LSUsports.net
(9/9/00)
Tiger fans spent the summer of 1996 waiting anxiously, watching their calendars in eager anticipation of the arrival of Sept.7.
The University of Houston was coming to Tiger Stadium to take on a highly touted LSU squad riding high on the heels of a 45-26 Independence Bowl win over Michigan State just nine months earlier. The bowl game victory was the first for LSU since the 1987 Gator Bowl and was thought by many to be a preview of the dominance the Tigers would enjoy in ’96.
The first step was supposed to be a cakewalk in the season opener. What it turned out to be was a dog fight between two deeply talented football teams.
Tiger fans sat stunned as Houston and LSU made their way off the field at the end of the first half. With the Tigers trailing the Cougars 20-7, some fans booed. Others chose to trudge back to their cars not realizing they were about to miss the best single game offensive performance in LSU history.
Sophomore tailback Kevin Faulk came to LSU in 1995 as one of the most highly touted recruits in school history. When new Tiger head coach Gerry DiNardo came to Baton Rouge, he made it his number one priority to keep the product of Carencro High School from leaving the state. DiNardo knew Faulk would be the key ingredient to turning around a Tiger program mired in its worst losing streak ever.
In Faulk’s freshman year of 1995, he started seven of the 10 games in which he played, rushing for 852 yards and six touchdown’s. But his sophomore campaign was the one all Tiger fans had been anxiously awaiting, and those fans who stuck around for the second half of the Houston game saw what they had been waiting for.
“We were down at halftime but I remember looking around the locker room and nobody thought we weren’t capable of coming back,” Faulk said. “We weren’t playing well but we never panicked and we thought we had a chance to come back and win.”
Faulk wasted no time in leading his team on the come back trail. On LSU’s first offensive play of the second half, Faulk took a handoff from quarterback Herb Tyler straight down the field for an 80-yard touchdown run
cutting the Houston lead to 20-14. Faulk was responsible now for both Tiger TD’s, the first a three-yard run in the first quarter. The crowd came back to life.
But the buzz lasted only a short time, however, as Houston quarterback Chuck Clements led his team down the field, completing a one-yard TD pass with 6:11 left in the third to put the Cougars up 27-14.
The Cougars wasted little time in scoring again, this time on a 30-yard fumble recovery with 5:57 to play in the third to make the score 34-14 heading into the final period.
Despite the seemingly insurmountable Houston lead, Faulk and his teammates kept their hopes up and their eyes open. The fourth quarter was to show the true worth of that Tiger team.
Faulk fielded a punt on the first play of the quarter and, with the help of some key blocks, blasted down the field for a 78-yard punt return touchdown.
“First of all, it was great blocking from my teammates,” Faulk said. “What helped mewith that punt was that it was a line drive and I was able to catch it on the run with a full head of steam. My blockers opened up the holes for me and that play gave us some momentum.”
The Tigers kept building on that momentum with every passing minute of the fourth quarter. Just six minutes later, Tiger running back Kendall Cleveland dove into the end zone from one yard out. The point after cut the Houston lead to just six at 34-28. Just five minutes later, a 36-yard TD run by freshman tailback Rondell Mealey capped an improbable come back and gave the Tigers the season-opening victory they so desperately needed.
Mealy finished the game with 161 yards in his first game as a Tiger. But, the real star of the show was Faulk whose 246 yards on the ground broke former Tiger Charles Alexander’s single game rushing record of 237 set in 1977. Faulk also set a new team record with 376 all-purpose yards, the second highest yardage total in Southeastern Conference History.
“It meant a lot to me to break the record because there have been some great running backs at LSU,” Faulk said. “Charles Alexander, Billy Cannon, Dalton Hilliard…..there have always been good backs at LSU. What made it special also was the fact that I know Charles (Alexander) well and it gave me some perspective to break one of his records. It was a special moment.”
Lost in the excitement of Faulk’s outstanding performance was the fact that he almost didn’t make it to the playing field that Saturday. A misunderstanding in his hometown of Carencro, a misunderstanding where he was cleared of any wrong doing, made DiNardo think twice about playing the future All-American. But instead of riding the bench for the entire game, Faulk only had to stand on the sidelines for the first offensive series.
“I only found out from Coach DiNardo on Wednesday or Thursday before the game that I was going to play,” Faulk said. “I wanted to come up with something big.”
Saying that Faulk’s performance that night was “big” is an understatement. The 1996 Tigers used the momentum from that exciting come from behind win to propel them to a 10-win season for the first time since the days of head coach Mike Archer in 1987. The Tigers capped that record season with a 10-7 victory over Clemson in the Peach Bowl.
Faulk said the success of the ’96 Tigers was never in doubt, even while trailing by 20 points in the fourth quarter of the first game of the year.
“The win effected how we played the rest of the season,” Faulk said. “I don’t think that if we didn’t win that game that we wouldn’t have a good season. But it was still important to win that game because we ended up winning 10 games that year and winning the Peach Bowl.”