Welcome to the Transfer Portal Bowl.

Twice-beaten LSU and No. 7 unbeaten Ole Miss, the two SEC teams this season with the most four-year transfers, clash in Tiger Stadium today at 2:30 with the league’s West Division lead at stake.

The Tigers (5-2 overall, 3-1 in SEC West) and the Rebels (7-0, 3-0 SEC West) have 25 and 24 four-year transfers respectively with LSU starting seven transfers and Ole Miss starting nine.

Starting quarterbacks Jayden Daniels of LSU and Jaxson Dart of Ole Miss battled each other last season as Pac-12 QBs. Daniels, as Arizona State’s starter, led his team to 31-16 win over USC and Dart, who came off the bench and engineered scoring drives that produced 13 points.

This season in their new locales, Daniels and Dart have been works in progress as their respective head coaches Brian Kelly and Lane Kiffin meshed their similar run-pass dual QB talents.

Kelly’s patience with Daniels’ reluctance to throw ball downfield unless a receiver was wide open finally paid off in last Saturday’s 45-35 LSU victory at Florida.

Daniels completed 23 (to nine different receivers) of 32 passes for 349 yards and three TDs and added 44 rushing yards and three TDs. He hit 8 of 9 passes for 173 yards on third downs with six of his third-down completions for first downs.

“I thought he played great the other night running and throwing,” Kiffin said after watching LSU-Florida game film. “I've seen him before when he was transferring. He’s a very explosive player and they seem to have gotten the receivers going. They were really great on third-down and great in general.”

Daniels’ confidence was bolstered because he finally got on the same page as Tigers’ preseason first-team All-American wide receiver Kayshon Boutte.

Prior to the Tigers’ win at Florida, Boutte had just 17 catches for 130 yards and one TD in LSU’s first six games. Compare that to his 38 receptions for 509 yards in the Tigers’ first six games last season. He sustained a season-ending ankle in game six at Kentucky.

Last Saturday, Boutte had six catches for 115 yards, his first 100-yard game of the season.

“As the season goes on, we kind of started spending more time together trying to build that bond,” Boutte said of Daniels. “And I feel like it's starting to pay off. We're finally getting together on the field. Everything is just connected.”

Against Ole Miss, which is ranked 5th nationally in scoring (40.9 points per game), 14th in total offense (502.6 yards per game) and 3rd in rushing offense (271.1 ypg), LSU has to shake its first half doldrums. The Tigers’ only first quarter points in an SEC game to date is John Emery’s 7-yard TD pass from Daniels last Saturday vs. Florida.

If LSU doesn’t fly out of the gate from the jump vs. Ole Miss, the least it can do is keep the game even or within one score. That’s not easy task, according to Kelly, because of the multi-talented Dart operating the Rebs’ offense.

“They threw the ball last year because they had a great quarterback in (Matt) Corral,” Kelly said. “This is a different quarterback who’s really a dual threat. He's (Dart) a beautiful thrower of the football. But he is also athletic enough and can run that they've put him in a system where he becomes a dual threat.

“That's what Lane (Kiffin) does well. He's going to set his offense based upon who the player is. It's not about plays, it's about players for him, and he changes based upon who he has.”

LSU’s defense will have its hands full trying to cool the Ole Miss rushing attack keyed by Dart (42.7 yards pg) and running backs Quinshon Judkins (102.9 ypg) and Zach Evans (86.4 ypg) who are the SEC's second and fifth leading rushers respectively.

That trio collectively has run for 1,696 yards and 17 TDs, which is more rushing TDs than six other SEC teams.

“We just have to be better at tackling,” Kelly said of his defense which gave up TD runs of 39 and 81 yards to Florida as well as a 51-yard scoring strike on the game’s second play. "I think if we start there and really focus on just doing our job we're going to be much better at the defensive end.”

LSU is a 2-point favorite over a team ranked 7th nationally in both polls, an indication the Las Vegas oddmakers don’t think much of Ole Miss schedule so far.

Five of the Rebels’ seven wins have been against teams who currently have losing records. Also, Ole Miss never could put away wins over Auburn and Tulsa until the final few minutes. A 22-19 home victory over Kentucky is considered the Rebels’ best win.

“This (LSU) is the best team we’ve played this year,” Kiffin said. “I think we've played really well on the road. Obviously, this (Tiger Stadium) is a different animal than the first two places (at Georgia Tech and Vanderbilt) we played.

“No disrespect to those places but this will be a real atmosphere and crowd noise for our guys to go into. That's a lot of challenges of just staying focused and doing things really well.”

Previously as Notre Dame’s head coach, Kelly’s record against USC head coach Kiffin and his defensive coordinator Ed Orgeron was 2-1 with a pair of road wins in Los Angeles. Kelly also beat Orgeron when he was USC’s interim in 2013 after Kiffin got fired after the first five games.

“Lane's a creative coach offensively, and they always have been cutting edge in terms of what they do,” Kelly said. “He's a guy that gets his team playing hard. Offensively, there is always an answer to what you do in-game as well.

“But more importantly, they scout you out. You better know your own self-scouting and where your tendencies are, because he's going to really dial in.”