Today at 2:05 a.m.
by Tom Murphy
FAYETTEVILLE — Each of the Arkansas Razorbacks’ prior losses this season had been in close games against ranked teams away from home in Oklahoma State and Texas A&M, so their 34-10 setback against No. 8 LSU on Saturday broke a pattern.
The 24-point loss was quite unlike blowout losses to Auburn and Missouri last season, when the opponents took control of the games virtually from the outset.
Arkansas had the ball trailing 16-10 with 4:58 remaining in the third quarter against LSU before Whit Weeks’ tipped interception turned into a 2-yard touchdown drive to change the flow of the game.
Coach Sam Pittman was asked how he thinks the Razorbacks will respond to the largest margin of defeat of the season.
“Oh I think we’ll be fine,” he said. “I still think we’ve got a good football team. I think LSU’s pretty good. But I think we’ve got a good football team. We have to respond. I mean, we go into Mississippi State and then we got Ole Miss and Texas, we’ve got Missouri, we’ve got Louisiana Tech.
“We’ve got some good teams, but we can … We always want to go to the postseason and we can still do that. Our kids will be excited to try to get to postseason and we’ve got to rebound next week, obviously, because I think Mississippi State is playing a lot better than what they did early in the year.”
Defensive end Landon Jackson said the Razorbacks will have their focus in the right place moving forward.
“Just like after a big-time win, you’ve got to flush it,” Jackson said. “After a big-time loss, you’ve got to flush it as well. We’ve got to flush this after watching the film and doing corrections. Go back to practice on Monday ready to work and ready to play Mississippi State, because you can’t let a loss affect you following weeks and create more losses.”
Said quarterback Taylen Green, “We’ve got a great opportunity to bounce back with Mississippi State.”
Green’s recovery
Arkansas quarterback Taylen Green missed only a chunk of the fourth quarter in the Razorbacks’ 19-14 win over then-No. 4 Tennessee after taking an illegal shot to his left knee.
Green was asked after Saturday’s game if he had any concerns he might not make it back for the LSU game.
“I was a little worried, but I’m grateful that it wasn’t really nothing serious and we had a bye week,” Green said. “The training staff did an amazing job of getting me ready. I couldn’t go home for the bye week, so it was a little deflating, but you know, it was just trying to focus on getting my body right and getting healthy. They came up with a great plan, and I felt great out there.”
Jackson update
Arkansas’ starting tailback Ja’Quinden Jackson hobbled off twice with a nagging ankle injury and he did not come back after going down at the end of a 5-yard run early in the fourth quarter. Jackson was checked out in the medical tent and then went into the locker room for further testing.
“Yeah, he’s had that ankle,” Coach Sam Pittman said. “He wanted to go and he had practiced all week. But he just got it tweaked up a little bit again, the same one.”
Radio waves
Coach Sam Pittman, speaking on the Razorback Sports Network postgame show, said Arkansas was “handled physically from the start,” a scenario that had not taken place this season.
Pittman said Arkansas didn’t play very well in the first half.
“We got it to 16-10 and I thought we had a really good chance,” he said. “Unfortunately we had the ball tipped up, batted for an interception. They scored the next play. Three turnovers to no turnovers against a team like LSU, because I think they’re a really good team, hard to win.”
Crowd count
The Razorbacks drew 75,893 fans for the loss to LSU, marking the fourth-largest crowd in Reynolds Razorback Stadium history.
The attendance was the highest for the UA since a 24-20 loss to No. 1 Alabama in 2010.
Snap trap
LSU was hit with 11 penalties for 80 yards, all of them on the offensive side, and eight of them were either false starts or illegal snaps.
While the infractions put the Tigers behind the sticks over and over, they overcame most of them, including one on their first touchdown drive and two on their second drive, which resulted in a Damian Ramos field goal.
“We had three that were double-clutches by our center and sometimes that’s on the quarterback, that he’s taking a little bit too much time,” LSU Coach Brian Kelly said. “I think the ownership in that is the management of the entire offense.
“We could easily say it was the crowd noise. Sometimes we have to get into a better rhythm and that’s getting the receivers lined up quicker. Sometimes it’s a fire drill out there. Garrett (Nussmeier) is getting information. So, look, all of that together, we have to clean it up, because that stuff can’t continue to happen. There were more penalties out there than I would like. We’ll go back and we’ll look at it more closely, but it’s not one person. The whole management of it has to get cleaner.”
Up next
The Razorbacks face their penultimate road game of the season at 11:45 a.m. Saturday against Mississippi State in Starkville, Miss.
Mississippi State (1-6, 0-4) join Auburn as the only winless teams in conference play, while Ole Miss (1-2), Oklahoma (1-3) and Kentucky (1-4) have one win apiece.
The Bulldogs are winless since clubbing Eastern Kentucky 56-7 in their season opener. However, first-year Coach Jeff Lebby’s team played well-regarded Georgia and Texas A&M within 10 points the last two weeks, falling 41-31 in Athens, Ga., and 34-24 at home to the Aggies on Saturday.
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