By: Drake Priddy

FAYETTEVILLE – The “Boot” stays in Louisiana and Arkansas loses another close one. The Razorbacks played #12 LSU in Death Valley on Saturday and lost 34-31.

LSU kicked the go-ahead field goal with five seconds left in the game. The Arkansas defense gave up 426 yards of total offense to the Tigers and the 34 points. LSU’s quarterback, Jayden Daniels has been a name of mention recently. He contributed to the offensive attack with his 320 passing yards, 36 rushing yards, and his 4 passing touchdowns.

Arkansas’ redshirt junior linebacker Jaheim Thomas and redshirt senior safety Hudson Clark, both gave Daniels his credit for the game.

“I’d say he’s a very great player,” said Thomas. “We had a very good gameplan. The result didn’t go the way we wanted it to, but at the end of the day we still played hard, and we still held him down as much as we could.”

“Yeah, I mean he’s a great runner,” said Clark. “Great passer. He’s been in talks for.the Heisman for a while…At the end of the day you have to look back and give him credit.”

Arkansas led by two field goals before LSU scored their first points of the game in the second quarter via a field goal. Arkansas responded with a touchdown and LSU returned the favor to close the half 13-10 Arkansas.’

LSU’s offense came back quickly in the second quarter, setting up the shootout for the second half. Head coach, Sam Pittman credits LSU’s quick strike ability to get back in the game.

“Well, I don’t think it took but about 18 seconds, I think,” said Pittman. “I think we kicked off with 48 and they scored with 30. It was hard…Looking back, going in 13-3 versus 13-10, yeah, big difference…Then they came out, got the ball and went down and scored and put us in a jamwhere we were playing catch up the rest of the game.”

After the second half, LSU was able to open up their running game contributing to 113 yards on the ground and adding more to the Arkansas defensive problem. Clark attributes their run game to their deep attacks down field.

“…They established the run often in that second half, so maybe having to play a little more aggressive on that allowed them to go deep a few times,” said Clark. “They’ve got great coaches, we’ve got great coaches, and they just made some good adjustments at halftime.”

Pittman also saw how the run game added to the Tigers offensive advance.

“They ran the ball more in the second half than they did the first half and that.might have took some of that rush off us too, you know,” said Pittman. “But they ran the ball well.The guy went for about 40 on a run on us and I think their ability to run the ball slowed our pass rush down a little bit…”

LSU would go on to outscore Arkansas 24-18 in the second half and win 34-31 on the last second field goal. At the end of the day losing is never fun, but the Razorbacks just went toe to toe with a #12 LSU tiger team.

Thomas and Clark, both who saw the loss as a great effort from the Razorbacks have great faith for the rest of the season.

“I say, just a great effort man,” said Thomas. “We fought our hard out, just being able to play to the end of the whistle. So, just being able to bounce back, go back to work this week. Practice hard. Because we have a great opponent coming up against us, so being able to keep up that momentum on offense and defense and play.

“Yeah, I think we gave great effort for all 60 minutes, “said Clark. “A loss is never acceptable, so I think going into next week we got to fix some stuff. And then just get ready to play A&M.”

Thomas went on to lead the Razorback defense with 13 total tackles (3 solo), 0.5 sacks, and a 0.5 credit for a tackle for loss. Transfer senior safety, Alfahiym Walcott had eight total tackles, five of which were solo. Redshirt, sophomore Chris “Pooh” Paul had eight total tackles, three of which were solo.

Dwight “Nudie” McGlothern had a three total tackles (3 solo) and most notably a
sole interception.

The Arkansas defense continues to show they can battle it out with any offense. At the end of the day, they allowed only three more points than the LSU defense and seven more than the BYU defense. They have shown they have the ability to compete, but again you still must score more points to win.