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A 10-win season looms large for LSU's national perception

BATON ROUGE, La. — Foster Moreau stood in front of his teammates before Saturday’s home finale against Rice and got straight to the point.


On Senior Night, the final 60 minutes playing inside Tiger Stadium for 18 seniors such as Garrett Brumfield, John Battle, Nick Brossette and Moreau, the senior tight end implored his teammates not to win for the seniors; win for LSU. “Let’s play for our team,” Moreau challenged the team.


Moreau set a new career-high with five receptions for 73 yards, including a 13-yard touchdown, his first of the season. In the post-game, he denied any theories that the LSU coaches orchestrated a game plan to involve seniors like Brossette, who scored twice, or Moreau, who was targeted six times, good for second-most on the team.


It was all about taking care of Rice and inching closer to a 10-win campaign, the program’s first since 2013.


“It means a lot for this program,” Moreau said. “I remember at SEC Media Days, this was one of my targets. We hadn’t had 10 wins in a couple of years. That would mean a lot. If we got to 10 wins, we’d be in a pretty good position to where we really wanted to be. I’m happy with how this team has done and the adversity that we’ve fought through and the fight that we’ve shown.”


“You can’t put it on a single guy. You can’t give a guy a number and tell him to lead; it’s the other 50 people on the team that are leading with him,” he continued. “It’s an incredible credit to this team. We are doing so well because our team is filled with leaders on and off the field, people go to practice, who have high character, who go to class and go to tutors. They’re not late. They show up, they’re respectful, and that goes a long way.


“A wise guy once told me that once you do the right stuff off the field, you’ll do all that stuff on the field, too, and that couldn’t ring more true for this season.”


The Tigers have flirted with double-digit wins since then. They’ve accumulated eight wins twice (2014, 2016) and nine wins twice (2015, 2017).


Before the season, the national media pegged LSU as a .500-or-so team with a ceiling of seven, maybe eight wins.


LSU broke through that glass ceiling with a ninth victory in dominating fashion over Rice and has a chance to buck a recent string of eight- and nine-win seasons next Saturday with a trip to College Station. Sure, coach Ed Orgeron’s team has successfully blocked out the noise, but nobody has lost sight of what many expected from these Tigers.


“A lot of people were felling me in to what they were saying. We were looking at it and laughing at it,” Devin White said. “Look at us now. We’re 9-2 and a lot of people have to eat those words and I hope it tastes disgusting. Everybody can write what they want to write, but it’s about how we come out and perform. Before each game starts, we have a 50-50 chance of winning because the game starts at 0-0.”


To get to 10-2, LSU will need to get past Texas A&M, a division rival that has been a source of season-defining games for the past half-decade. In 2015, a 19-7 triumph past the Aggies keyed Joe Alleva’s decision to retain Les Miles as head coach. A year later, a convincing rout of A&M on Thanksgiving night helped Orgeron shed the “interim” label from his job title and catapulted him into the Tigers’ full-time coach amid rumors swirling of a deal between the university and former Houston coach Tom Herman.


LSU has won seven in a row against Texas A&M; an eighth would put the 2018 installment of this SEC West showdown would carry as much weight as the previous three — not for job security or head coaching searches, but in redefining the direction of the program entering Orgeron’s third year.


“I want more (wins). I don’t want to settle for just 10,” White said. “Ten is the next step … We’ve made a lot (of progress). We’re on an incline. We took a step back, but we’ve found a way to get back. Now we’ve got to stay up. Let’s keep climbing to the top.


“Having a winning season gets this program where it’s used to be. We’re letting the recruits know we’re for real — to come join us and make us even better. They see LSU on the rise from what we used to be, how dominated we used to be, playing with a lot of energy, a lot of swagger. Coach O believes in his players and being a players-first coach, he wants everyone to buy in and keep getting the best recruits, all the guys to stay home and a couple guys to join this family, to keep getting better and better.”


“Motivation like 10 wins before the regular season ends, that’s huge,” Grant Delpit added. “That’s better than we did last year or the year before. That’s pretty big. It’s been a while, and 11 wins on the season, that’s pretty huge.”


LSU’s first 10-win campaign in five years looms large for the national perception of the football program, one that nationally selected to finish fifth in the SEC West this year, one spot behind these Aggies.


While the season opener against top-10 foe Miami set the tone for what would follow over the course of the fall, a road comeback at Jordan-Hare and a roaring defeat of No. 2 Georgia are obvious highlights on the Tigers’ season. However, a date with Texas A&M amounts to a season-defining game.


Ten wins, New York’s Six bowls, booms on the recruiting trail, and more so, national respect are all hanging in the balance during next week’s trip to Kyle Field. Heck, it’s why you come to LSU, White stressed.


“You come here to play in big games, but you’ve got to finish the season,” he said. “Our season is 1-0 right now and it’s Texas A&M. We’ve got to beat them, and if we handle Texas A&M, a lot of things can happen and we’ll be in a big bowl.”

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