BATON ROUGE — LSU’s seventh-ranked football team continued to prepare for its first conference road game of the season against Mississippi State with a two-hour workout at the Charles McClendon Practice Facility here Wednesday.
The Tigers, who are coming off a 17-10 win over then-No. 7 Georgia last week, enters the contest with a 4-0 overall mark and a 1-0 league record. The Tigers will be going after their first 5-0 start since 1973 when LSU won its first nine games that year. Mississippi State is winless at 0-3 after last week’s 42-35 setback to Houston.
Last year, LSU posted a 31-13 win over the Bulldogs in Baton Rouge. Two years ago, LSU beat Mississippi State 42-0 in Starkville.
Kickoff for Saturday’s contest is set for 8:15 p.m. in Starkville. The game will be televised to a national audience by ESPN2 with Gary Barnett and Bill Curry handling the call.
“We’ve had an okay week of practice,” LSU coach Nick Saban told members of the media following Wednesday’s workout. “I think division games like this are really critical and we need to be ready for each and everyone of them.”
“It does not get any easier and I talked about this last week. Every game you win makes the next game even more important. I think this is a very defining game like I said in the press conference on Monday. This is a defining game for our team and this will show if we have what it takes to be a consistent performing, improving team like we need to be to win in this league with any kind of consistency.”
Against Mississippi State, the Tigers will face a team that is averaging 32 points and 450 yards of offense a game. On the other hand, the Bulldogs are allowing 38 points and over 500 yards a game. The Tigers enter the contest ranked first in the SEC in total defense (260.0 yards per game) and they are second in the league and ninth in the nation with 40.0 points a contest.
Saban said the Tigers had two players out of practice on Wednesday as defensive end Marquise Hill (ankle) and linebacker Adrian Mayes (wrist) missed the workout. Both players are expected to practice on Thursday and should be ready for Saturday’s game.
The Tigers will practice again on Thursday followed by a walk-thru in Tiger Stadium on Friday afternoon before departing Baton Rouge at 4:15 p.m.