BATON ROUGE – LSU put the finishing touches on the game plan for Saturday’s season-opener against BYU with “No Repeat Thursday” here indoor at the Charles McClendon Practice Facility.
The Tigers will have a walk-thru on Friday afternoon, eat dinner in the Stadium Club at Tiger Stadium and then catch a movie as a team before making the one-hour drive to New Orleans tomorrow night.
Kickoff for the first-ever meeting between LSU and BYU is scheduled for 8:30 p.m. CT on Saturday at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. ESPN will televise the game.
“We’ve had a good week of practice,” LSU coach Ed Orgeron said on Thursday afternoon. “We are excited to open up the 2017 Football season in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome and we know that we will have a great turnout from our fans.”
Orgeron said the Tigers are still unsettled on who will start at the bench linebacker spot as true freshman K’Lavon Chaisson and redshirt freshman Ray Thornton continue to battle it out for the starting role. Orgeron said it would likely be a game time decision on who would start at bench linebacker.
Orgeron also noted that it’s likely that true freshman Saahdiq Charles will start at right guard, ahead of fellow true freshman Ed Ingram. Orgeron said both Charles and Ingram will share time on Saturday against the Cougars.
If he does indeed start against BYU, Charles will become the first true freshman offensive lineman to start the season-opener in school history.
Defensively, the Tigers will face one of the top centers in college football in senior Tejan Koroma.
“Their center is going to be a handful all night,” Orgeron said of the BYU team captain and three-year starter. “We are going to rotate Greg (Gilmore) and Ed (Alexander) in the middle. They are going to have to play well for us.”
BYU enters the contest with a 1-0 mark following last week’s 20-6 win over Portland State. LSU is opening a season in a Louisiana location other than Baton Rouge for the first time since 1916 when the Tigers beat then Southwestern Louisiana Institute (now Louisiana-Lafayette) in Lafayette.
LSU goes into the contest having won 14 of its past 15 season-openers and the Tigers are 54-1 in their last 55 non-conference regular season games.