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Notre Dame steals bowl win from LSU with one heartbreaking play
By Will Ogburn
Published:
It seemed to be the perfect script for the final game of redshirt senior Danny Elting’s college career, as he led the Tigers to a 12 play, 76-yard drive to put the Tigers up 17-14 with 5:46 left in the Citrus Bowl.
Unfortunately for LSU, Notre Dame had other plans. The Irish promptly answered three plays later when WR Miles Boykin split the defense for a winning 55-yard TD.
This 21-17 loss was a fitting in for an LSU season that has been a roller-coaster ride from the start; the Tigers outgained Notre Dame 399-368 but were sunk by miscues on offense and special teams. LSU missed two field goals of 22 and 37 yards in a first half in which they scored 0 points.
After a shaky start, Etling and the offense played well enough to get a win given the circumstances. Of those 399 yards, the quarterback finished 19-of-33 for 229 yards and two TDs.
Running back Derrius Guice also had a solid outing with 98 yards on 21 carries as part of an LSU rushing attack that racked up 170 yards on the ground. Despite rushing for nearly 100 yards and catching both of Etling’s TDs, however, Guice was stuffed at the goal line on that final LSU drive in which seven points would’ve resulted in a tie, even with the heroics by Boykin. Such was the season for LSU.
Though the defense did well enough, holding Notre Dame to only a field goal of their own through 30 minutes of football, the image of Boykin running through the grasp of Donte Jackson and the LSU defensive backfield will be hard to erase.
After a loss like this, the legacy of the 2017 Tigers will be hard to decipher. They hung with the best teams on their schedule, beating one-time contender Auburn and similarly outgaining former No. 1 Alabama, but the losses to Troy and Mississipi State were among the Tigers’ worst in the last decade. In the Citrus Bowl, all those electrifying strengths and glaring weaknesses were brought to bear, and hopefully, consistency will finally be found this offseason.
A former resident of both Baton Rouge and the heart of Crimson Tide country, Will Ogburn handles multimedia content and news coverage for Saturday Down South.
