Inside LSU football's rally at South Carolina: 'They fought like LSU Tigers'

Brian Kelly tapped his hands together and pondered at the ceiling in the underbelly of Williams-Brice Stadium, taking some careful moments before answering a question about LSU football's defense.

No. 16 LSU (2-1, 1-0 SEC) just minutes before had pulled off a daring escape, Houdini-ing a win from the clutches of defeat from the hands of South Carolina 36-33 on Saturday afternoon.

The Gamecocks (2-1, 1-1 SEC), with a rowdy home crowd behind them, jumped out to a 17-0 lead in the second quarter. The Tigers fought off the "Sandstorm" and white towels and a team with soaring momentum to outscore Shane Beamer's bunch 36-16 over the final two-plus periods.

According to Kelly, nobody picked LSU to win over South Carolina — ESPN's College Gameday was in Columbia for the matchup and panelists Nick Saban, Desmond Howard picked the Tigers while Lee Corso donned the Mike the Tiger headgear at the end of the show.

While there were clearly analysts on LSU's side, the early game script looked all Gamecocks. They scored a touchdown on the opening drive and blocked a punt to set up their second TD. LSU opened with three punts on offense before scoring on its next drive and then going TD-field goal-TD-fumble-punt-interception-TD to close out the game.

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"We want to be better defensively," Kelly said. "All of what you saw today is correctable.

"Everything we did today, we have to do better coaching it and we have to do a better job of executing it. And we're capable of doing it. We have to be better and we will be."

On defense, several busts allowed for either long touchdown runs from South Carolina freshman quarterback Lanorris Sellers or gave him time to throw to open receivers who picked up plenty of yards after catch.

"Cut out the big plays we gave them, other than that, I think our defense played physical, fast," LSU linebacker Whit Weeks said. "We just got to eliminate the big plays coming up for the next few weeks of our season. We'll be a lot better defense for it."

Offensively, LSU had a couple of opportunities inside the 10-yard line and came up with zero points. It had turnovers on early snaps quarterback Garrett Nussmeier wasn't ready to receive. Nussmeier threw an interception in the end zone in the fourth quarter that could've been a backbreaker.

But LSU's defense didn't break.

"They did unbelievable," Nussmeier said. "Coach Kelly challenged all of us to just go play and have fun out there. This is the same sport we've all been playing since we were 6 years old, it's just a bigger stage. At the end of the day, it's still football. It's still what we love to do.

"Mistakes were going to happen. It's about pushing through them. The defense showed some toughness."

LSU senior tailback Josh Williams, who scored the game-winning touchdown with 1:12 left, said that, down 17 points, no one on LSU's sideline was quivering. Everybody wanted to get into the game.

"It was a good energy," Williams said. "It was a good message from coach Kelly on the sideline, telling us, 'This is it. This what we fight for." It kinda brought back USC and we knew we had to go out there and win it."

Unlike the season opener in Las Vegas where the Tigers lost 27-20 to the Trojans in the waning seconds and not being able to close that game out with a lead in the fourth quarter, LSU rallied and slammed the door on South Carolina.

"Finished the game strong," Williams said.

Kelly has praised this LSU's team work ethic and how it prepares — preparation for Saturday meant the team listening to "Sandstorm" to get into the game mindset, Weeks said.

The Tigers coach said after the USC loss that his team works too hard to lose how it lost in Vegas and that good things would come for the group. There's plenty to fix but Kelly continues to hammer the notion that LSU can be a really good team.

"They want to do it the right way. There's great fight. They fight like LSU Tigers," Kelly said. "That's what we want for our fans, what we want for their family and teammates. They showed that today. If they continue to do that, which I know they will because they prepare the right way, we just need to execute better. If we do that, this is going to be a really good team."

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Cory Diaz covers the LSU Tigers for The Daily Advertiser as part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow his Tigers coverage on Twitter: @ByCoryDiaz. Got questions regarding LSU athletics? Send them to Cory Diaz at bdiaz@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: How LSU football stayed poised enough to rally, beat South Carolina