Pretty good article. Oct. 23 2003 Auburn vs. LSU DON'T hold that Tiger! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Matthew Zemek When Auburn and LSU collide in a five-star tiger fight that even Siegfried and Roy wouldn’t be able to control, there will be another earthquake in the aptly-named Tiger Stadium. No, Tommy Hodson won’t be completing an improbable touchdown pass in the final moments to give the Bayou Bengals a 7-6 win over a visiting Auburn team in a night game in Death Valley, but an earthquake in the SEC West landscape will be felt just the same when these two teams walk off the field this Saturday. At different points in this crazy 2003 season, this matchup—long looked to as the SEC West game of the year—set up to be a one-sided affair. In early September, with Auburn looking pitiful beyond all description, Mike the Tiger and the folks in Cajun Country were licking their chops like nobody’s bidness. LSU seemed ready to rock, roll and rout Auburn into oblivion when this matchup eventually came across the calendar. But oh, just a few weeks later, on Oct. 11, it was the Auburn community that had a victory over LSU in Plain sight. While Tommy Tuberville’s troops cemented a resurgence that had begun the week before against Tennessee by putting together another physical tour de force against Arkansas in Fayetteville, L-S-Who, a bunch of impostors who had been playing like a top-six team through the first several weeks of the season, acted more like the Detroit Tigers than the Louisiana State Tigers, bungling their way through an embarrassing 19-7 loss to Florida in which the Tigers’ offense got bageled. Punt returner Skyler Green tallied LSU’s only points on a day when quarterback Matt Mauck looked totally clueless and the whole offensive unit drowned in a sea of penalties and turnovers. The performance was so painful to watch that Mauck, a dental student, had to be wishing that he was pulling teeth for money, for that eyesore of an effort against the Gators had to be as wrenching and agonizing as any dental procedure Mauck has ever studied in the classroom. As for Auburn’s teeth, they were gleaming white and sharp-edged, waiting to draw blood after the events of Oct. 11. But then last week, while a Cadillac ran over, around and through Mississippi State—giving Tuberville a sweet farewell win over his chum Jackie Sherrill—something changed on the LSU side of the equation to ultimately bring this long-awaited game back to five-star status. Mauck and the Bayou Bengals, just like Stella, got their groove back. FULL ARTICLE