Field just one aspect of rivalry

Published 6:00 pm Thursday, November 2, 2017

Recruiting trail just as chippy

Ed Orgeron, still an assistant coach at the time, well remembers recruiting the best defensive lineman currently on the LSU roster.

Rashard Lawrence, then a five-star prospect from Monroe’s Neville High School, used to drop by his office to watch film on Sunday mornings after an unofficial visit to the LSU game the night before.

Finally, Orgeron came clean — where did the Tigers stand with him?

“I really like Alabama,” Lawrence said.

“Thank you,” Orgeron replied.

Undeterred, Orgeron kept recruiting Lawrence and it paid off. He became a Tiger after Orgeron eventually beat out Ohio State for his services.

“Had to battle,” Orgeron recalled. “Came all the way down to the end.

But it counted as a rare recruiting victory over the Tide and Nick Saban, who hasn’t been shy about swooping into his old Louisiana haunts to keep the Bama process restocked with the biggest, the strongest and the swiftest.

When he was named LSU’s full-time head coach last November, Orgeron made no bones about it. His job was to narrow the talent gap between the Tigers and the Bama team that will carry a six-game winning streak against LSU into Saturday night’s game in Tuscaloosa.

Orgeron called the Tide the “benchmark” of the SEC.

“We have to recruit better,” he said at the time. “We have to get players that are similar to the benchmark of the conference.”

The Monroe area seems to be the bloodiest recruiting battleground between the two, but Bama has eight players on its two-deep from various parts of the Bayou State.

It’s nothing new. Louisiana-bred NFL players such as Cam Robinson, Tim Williams and Landon Collins all did their college work at Alabama.

Saban isn’t going anywhere.

One of the things that attracted Saban to the LSU job that he took in December of 1999 was the wealth of talent in the state.

“They’ve always had great players and we’ve been fortunate to get a couple of those,” Saban said Wednesday on the Southeastern Conference teleconference. “It goes all the way back 15 years — however many years ago it was — that we went to LSU and at that time LSU wasn’t getting a lot of the players in north Louisiana. We developed a lot of relationships trying to turn that around and still have a lot of good relationships.”

Orgeron is trying to halt that pipeline, particularly when it comes to the big men up front.

It’s the most glaring difference in the two teams heading into Saturday.

LSU will be forced to start two true freshmen offensive linemen against the nation’s top-ranked defense. Other than Lawrence, the Tigers’ depth-starved defensive live would probably be better suited for the Tigers’ old 4-3 alignment than the 3-4 employed by coordinator Dave Aranda.

 “We’ve got a little ways to go,” Orgeron admitted.

For instance, he’s most encouraged with the two true freshmen in the offensive line, Saahdiq Charles and Ed Ingram, because they’ve proven that physically they can handle the combat in the SEC.

It’s also one of the toughest positions for a young player mentally.

“Those are physical guys; they have the physical stature that it takes to be able to block these guys,” Orgeron said. “Are they ready to block these (Alabama) guys as freshmen? It’s pretty hard.

“Those guys can be the type of offensive linemen that we need. But we need to continue getting guys like that.”

On the other side of the ball, there should be help for next year. Orgeron claimed back in August that he had the “two best ineligible defensive tackles in America.”

But Tyler Shelvin, who at 6-foot-3, 350 pounds was rated the state’s No. 1 prospect out of Notre Dame High of Crowley last year, had to sit out this season as an academic redshirt after the NCAA Clearinghouse denied his appeal. Breiden Fehoko (6-3, 298) is sitting out this year after transferring from Texas Tech.

“Those are guys we brought in to play the 3-4 defense to win in the SEC,” Orgeron said.

Both are practicing, but for now they only give LSU a powerful front for the scout team to better simulate Alabama.

“We need to continue to recruit better, get bigger and faster at the line of scrimmage,” Orgeron said. “This is a big man’s game.”

Orgeron has already said that — rare for LSU — the Tigers will be in the market for at least two junior college linemen on both sides of the ball in the upcoming recruiting class.

“We don’t have them yet,” Orgeron said. “But those are the things that I address daily.”

He’s likely to be butting heads with Alabama on that recruiting quest to upgrade LSU’s trenches.

“They do a good job,” Orgeron admitted. “We go after the same guys. I’m glad we got some of the guys we got. We beat them on a couple. They’ve beaten us.

“Remember, this is his (Saban’s) 11th year there. This is my first, OK?”