BATON ROUGE - No. 3 LSU faces its "Come to Bama" moment Saturday night.
And No. 1 and defending national champion Alabama will find out if it still is the anointed one of college football after toying with a schedule of lesser teams still wet behind the ears.
LSU (7-1, 4-1 Southeastern Conference) is more battle tested with a 36-16 win over then-No. 2 Georgia three weeks ago and two other victories over then-top 10 teams Miami and Auburn along with a win two weeks ago over Mississippi State, which is No. 18 in the College Football Playoff poll.
Alabama (8-0, 5-0 SEC) has played one ranked team at the time, before or since and beat CFP poll No. 20 Texas A&M, 45-23, on Sept. 22.
Alabama and LSU have been playing for two months now, and both teams do not really know if they are as great as their rankings yet.
"We're going to find out, I tell you that," LSU coach Ed Orgeron said. "We understand this is 'the' game."
LSU and Alabama kick off at 7 p.m. in Tiger Stadium on WWL-TV with the SEC West title virtually on the line along with a date in the SEC Championship Game in Atlanta on Dec. 1 and the inside track to the College Football Playoff final four semifinal games in Arlington, Texas, and Miami, Florida, on Dec. 29.
"We coming. We coming. And we ain't backing down," Orgeron said passionately after LSU lost its seventh straight last year to Alabama, 24-10, but the Tigers did out-gain the Tide.
"There were a lot of things that I thought we improved on in that football game. Not good enough, but we are coming," Orgeron said last week.
"We'll find out if we're a great team," said LSU tailback Nick Brossette, who is fifth in the SEC in rushing with 697 yards. "They're a great football team. I can't wait to play those guys. It's going to be a good one. They're physical. They're talented. They check off every box in the category. So, don't let the moment be bigger than you."
Alabama also has much to learn about itself. For example, how it will perform in the second half in a close game, which has not happened to the Crimson Tide since it came back from a 13-0 halftime deficit to beat Georgia, 26-23, on overtime in the national championship game on Jan. 8.
In fact, Tide coach Nick Saban has called the LSU game his team's "second season." Apparently, he has studied his previous schedule. The Tide has played six teams with .500 or losing records, including Louisville (2-6, 0-5 Atlantic Coast Conference), Arkansas (2-7, 0-5 SEC) and Tennessee (3-5, 1-4 SEC).
"This is a game where we're going to find out who we are," Saban said Thursday night on his weekly radio show. And he is apparently anxious to find that out as he seemed excited that his team may finally have a worthy opponent.
Asked what he may elect to do if Alabama wins the coin flip before the kickoff, Saban paused, seemed to be considering his words, then went with it. "To be honest with you, I hope we elect to kick (expletive deleted), is what I hope we do," he said as laughter roared.
That may have been a sign of respect for LSU. He certainly did not say anything close to that going into the Tennessee game or before playing Missouri (4-4, 0-4 SEC).
"They're going to try to be physical. We're going to try to be more physical," Saban said. "So, there's going to be a time in the game where it's going to test your resolve as a competitor, your perseverance to keep on fighting. That's the one thing that I think our team has got a challenge because we haven't been in a game like that."
Alabama has led at halftime this season by an average of 39-7 and has won its eight games by an average of 54-15. It leads the nation in scoring with 54 a game and in total offense with 564.2 yards a game. And quarterback Tua Tagovailoa leads the nation in passing efficiency at 238.8 on 107 completions in 152 attempts for 2,066 yards and 25 touchdowns with zero interceptions. That's 19.3 yards a completion.
But LSU will have the best defense Tagovailoa may see all season, including the playoffs. The Tigers lead the nation with 14 interceptions as safety Grant Delpit is second with five. LSU is also No. 1 in the SEC and No. 5 nationally in pass defense efficiency at 98.3 as it is allowing just a .506 completion percentage and less than 200 yards a game.
"They do a lot of multiples on third down where they disguise what they're doing," Saban said. "They blitz guys from one side, rotate the coverage the other way, try to confuse the quarterback. Dave Aranda is one of the best defensive coordinators in the country."
So far, Alabama and Tagovailoa have feasted on the five worst pass efficiency defenses in the SEC - No. 14 Texas A&M (415 yards in a 45-23 win), No. 13 Ole Miss (306 yards in a 62-7 win), No. 12 Arkansas (393 in a 65-31 win), No. 11 Missouri (380 yards in a 39-10 win) and No. 10 Tennessee (327 in a 58-21 win).
"I'm happy with the way our guys have competed, but we haven't been in a game like this," Saban said again.
LSU, meanwhile, was ranked a notch above undefeated Notre Dame in the CFP poll this week because it has six wins over teams with winning records - Miami (5-3, 2-2 Atlantic Coast Conference), Auburn (5-3, 2-3 SEC), Louisiana Tech (6-2, 4-1 Conference-USA), Ole Miss (5-3, 1-3 SEC), No. 6 Georgia (7-1, 5-1 SEC) and No. 18 Mississippi State (5-3, 2-3 SEC).
The Tigers' only loss was 27-19 at Florida, which is No. 11 in the CFP poll at 6-2 and 4-2. And LSU led 19-14 in the fourth quarter.
"We should have won that game," Orgeron said. "I feel like we were the better football team. I think this team is mature enough to understand that all they've got to do is play their best to beat Alabama. If we play our best, we're capable of doing that. We feel that already. Now, we have to go out and do it. We have to be hungry."
LSU has the intangibles advantage going in. A sellout crowd of 102,321 is expected, and perhaps more importantly, the universal anger of fan base and team will burn beyond capacity because of the suspension of star linebacker Devin White for the first half. He was called for a targeting hit on Mississippi State quarterback Nick Fitzgerald in LSU's last game on Oct. 20. Orgeron and LSU fans have called the call "unfair," and many fans will be carrying their Bama Conspiracy theory like torches to the game.
"This team plays well when they're mad," Orgeron said. "I coach better when I'm mad. I like it. That's good. We need to be that way."
White is third in the SEC in tackles with 76 - or 4.75 a half - along with seven tackles for losses with a sack, six quarterback hurries, two fumble recoveries, a forced fumble and eight passes defensed or broken up. Sophomore Patrick Queen, who has not started this season, or true freshman Micah Baskerville, who has started once, will replace White for the first half. Queen has 13 tackles in eight games. Baskerville has 18 stops in five games with a team-high 11 in his start at Florida.
"His impact is he's irreplaceable," LSU junior defensive end Rashard Lawrence said of White. "He's all over the place. He coaches our team, makes the calls."
But when White does enter the game for the second half, there has been talk that he may run from the locker room to the field alone after a grandiose proclamation of his return to the arena by public address announcer Dan "Chance of Rain Never" Borne.
Saban's plan is to quiet the crowd he knows all too well from both sides with calmness.
"We're going to have to challenge ourselves to stay focused on what we need to do to not really have calm in the midst of chaos, but be able to keep your poise," said Saban, who was LSU's coach from 2000-04 and will be coaching against LSU in Tiger Stadium for the sixth time at Alabama. He has won four of the five.
"You have to do a lot of really hard things when it comes to effort, toughness, perseverance and intangibles to compete in an atmosphere like the one we're going to have to compete in," he said. "So I'm really looking forward to it because I think it's going to tell us a lot about our team."
Same for LSU, but the Tigers are also battling history. Alabama has found out great things about itself in the last seven games against LSU, which were all wins. The Tigers haven't beaten Alabama in Tiger Stadium since 2010 and last won in 2011 at Alabama.
"We haven't been able to beat Alabama for a while," Lawrence said. "That puts pressure on the coaches and the players. We need to turn that into a motivation advantage for us."
Orgeron, 57, lived through 11 straight years of losses to Alabama from 1971-81 and three decades of no home wins over Alabama from 1971 through 1998. He is 0-5 himself against Alabama with two losses as LSU's coach and three as Ole Miss' coach.
"He wants to change that for the state and for the people," Lawrence said.
"We don't talk about that," Orgeron said of LSU's 0-for-7 losing streak against Alabama. "That's not something that's discussed. But obviously, I think all of us feel it. We understand the importance of beating Alabama at LSU. That's going to play into some motivation. I don't have to say it, though."
