BATON ROUGE — Maybe the point is still to win the game, plain and simple.

A month from now, for better or worse, no one will really remember what happened Saturday night for LSU’s home opener in a newly spruced up Tiger Stadium.

But if you’re LSU, coming off a mistake-filled season-opening loss and you’re going to schedule (and pay good money for) a tune-up against a Nicholls State, you have to accept that the point of the game is style points.

There were a few in the Tigers’ 44-21 win over the Colonels.

But not nearly enough to satisfy the crowd, a good portion  of which packed up at halftime and left early.

In a nutshell, the Tigers started off sluggish, got their act together long enough in the middle to take control and were sloppy late— but never were particularly physical.

And that last part was the most alarming thing.

That wasn’t an SEC team out there. And, as head coach Brian Kelly did, you give the Colonels their due for playing like wild banshees with some clever ball plays that occasionally befuddled LSU into precarious spots.

Duly noted.

But it’s no excuse.

Kelly prefaced his latest excuse by again saying he doesn’t make excuses, but he mentioned something about Las Vegas fatigue setting in on his team after the previous week’s trip to the desert and the short week to recover from the last-second USC loss.

Good thing he said that that wasn’t an excuse. Because it doesn’t hold water when you’re LSU playing Nicholls State, no matter how gutty and inspired the Colonels were.

It also wasn’t a glowing endorsement only a few days after LSU showed off its brand-new Recovery Center, the school’s latest football investment filled with high tech gadgetry like cyro chambers, massage chairs and various pods for hydrotherapy and deep sleep sessions and whatnot to replenish the body and soul.

I don’t know what all of it means, but I doubt any of it was in Nicholls State’s athletic budget for the game.

And yet, go figure, the Colonels were the livelier team in Tiger Stadium. And the most physical.

Is that modern marvel of recovery time still under warranty?

No, you never got any inkling that LSU might lose the game.

But, the fact is, it was a 2-point game, 23-21, two plays into the second half on a 67-yard, nearly untouched run, straight up the gut by Collin “What a Name” Guggenheim.

Kelly blamed that one on a missed assignment and LSU scored rather easily on its next three possessions to take any drama out of the contest.

That missed assignment can probably be fixed. In fact, LSU seemed to clean up a lot of stupid mistakes that plagued them against USC.

Still, the root of LSU’s current problems may be a taller task.

The Tigers just aren’t a very  physical team. There’s not a quick fix for that.

LSU had little trouble scoring, even without a running game.

But in the first half the Tigers hardly saw the ball. Nicholls grinded out two scoring drives of 13 plays apiece — using over a full quarter of the half, 15:16, in the process.

The Colonels did it by for the most part controlling the line of scrimmage.

The Tigers’ secondary looks much improved. It would be hard to be any worse than last year.

Even on short gains, the Colonels seemed to push the Tigers’ front back a tad.

The staff, however, had to know there were problems in the defensive front. They tried to replenish through the portal, but too often had to settle for their third and fourth choices.

Now, it won’t get any easier after Jacobian Guillory, by far their best defensive lineman, left the game early and, according to LSUOdyssey.com, is lost for the season with a torn Achilles tendon.

Again, up front figured to be a problem this season.

More puzzling is LSU’s inability to run the ball.

Some of it was for lack of trying.

The Tigers ran the ball only three times in the first quarter, only five in the second.

Kelly said a lot of it was checking into pass plays due to Nicholls’ defensive alignment. Still, they didn’t give up on running the ball as much as they never really gave it chance.

They ignored the ground game enough that quarterback Garrett Nussmeier threw six touchdown passes. Three of them were to Kyren Lacy, who — lesson learned? — celebrated all three scores without aiming an imaginary rifle at any defenders.

LSU also served notice that, once again, it will never run out of receivers as a lot of young hands were among the nine who caught passes.

A Nussmeier 12-yard scramble tied for the Tigers’ longest run.

Bottom line, Nicholls outrushed LSU 150-64.

That’s probably not sustainable, particularly in SEC play.

The Tigers have some SEC-caliber running backs. Not All-SEC, maybe, but good enough.

It’s hard to tell. There was just no running room all night — one or two yards and a cloud of Colonels.

And that makes no sense.

This is supposedly one of the best offensive lines in the country, with projected high draft picks at both tackles.

Two games into the season, that offensive line has not allowed a single sack.

But so far it just can’t seem to open up any running room.

That won’t get you far in SEC play.

“We’ve got to more physical on both lines,” Kelly said after the game. “If that doesn’t happen soon, then we will be talking about things we don’t want to talk about.”

That’s no excuse. It’s a fact.