BATON ROUGE — Over 5,000 tickets have been sold to LSU fans that are making the 1,300-mile trip between here and Tucson for Saturday’s nights clash between Southeastern Conference heavyweight and 13th-ranked LSU and Pac-10 foe Arizona.
The game, which will carry at 9 p.m. CDT start time, will be televised to a national audience by TBS Sports, the first appearance on the cable network for the Tigers since a 1991 win over Kentucky in Lexington.
Both teams are 1-0 and enter Saturday’s game with resounding opening night victories. LSU blasted Louisiana-Monroe, 49-7, in Tiger Stadium, while the Wildcats posted a 42-7 win over Texas-El Paso in Tucson. LSU’s win, however, didn’t come without a price as senior cornerback Randall Gay broke his left arm and will miss at least the next two weeks of action.
Against Arizona, the Tigers will face team that will use two quarterbacks on Saturday night. In last week’s win over Texas-El Paso, starter Nic Costa hit on 6 of 10 passes for 110 yards and one TD, while Ryan O’Hara connected on 8 of 16 passes for 119 yards and a 79-yard TD. Both quarterbacks are expected to play against the Tigers.
“I think both guys can throw the ball effectively so I do not want to minimize either guy’s ability as a passer, but (Nic) Costa is about a 5-11, 200-pound guy who looks like a running back playing quarterback,” LSU coach Nick Saban said. “He is very quick and athletic and has excellent speed. He can scramble and they move the pocket with him. He can make plays outside the pocket and is left-handed. The other guy (Ryan O’Hara) is more of a classic drop-back passer. He is tall, with a good arm and is accurate. They are a little different but I can’t tell from one game how much the offense changes. They ran basically the same plays with both guys in the game but they might have some different things they do with the two guys, but maybe we didn’t see them.”
In the backfield, the Wildcats will look to sophomore Mike Bell, who opened the season with 119 yards on 13 carries and one TD.
The Tigers will counter the Wildcat offense with a defense that limited Louisiana-Monroe to only 240 yards of offense last week. The Tigers held the Indians to 59 yard rushing and 181 yards passing. ULM didn’t score until early in the fourth quarter with most of the Tiger starters already done for the night.
Offensively, the Tigers will once again go with Matt Mauck at quarterback with Joseph Addai and Shyrone Carey splitting time in the backfield. Michael Clayton, who caught six passes for a career-best 152 yards and two TDs last week, will likely see action on both sides of the ball on Saturday.
The Tigers enter the Arizona contest coming off a good week of practice, which included a day in which they went indoors because of the high temperatures and humidity in the Baton Rouge area. LSU had a walk-thru in Tiger Stadium on Friday afternoon and left for Tucson at 3:30 p.m. with a scheduled arrival in the desert set for 5 p.m.
“The preparation for the game has gone well,” Saban said. “I think that Arizona played really well in their first game and were dominant. They were ahead like 35-0 at halftime and dominated the line of scrimmage and ran the ball effectively. Both of their backs looked like big-time players and they looked much-improved on defense. It is going to be test for us going on the road for the first time and being able to overcome all the distractions that you have when you make a road trip, especially the first one, and this will certainly show something about the maturity of our team.”