BATON ROUGE ? The debate over the country's No. 1 college football team was settled Saturday night. So, too, was the direction of LSU's season. And the formula that rallied the Tigers past No. 9 Florida, 28-24, at Tiger Stadium was simple: head coach Les Miles believed and his players delivered. LSU (6-0, 3-0 Southeastern Conference) was 5-for-5 on fourth-down conversions in the game, including two on runs by tailback Jacob Hester during the winning drive. "It was one for the ages," LSU defensive end Kirston Pittman said. "But there was one point in the game where it wasn't even about football anymore. It was about finding out if you had a heart inside your body." In fact, though, there was more to the outcome than a pair of short runs by Hester ? one that moved the chains past midfield, and another that set-up his own 2-yard touchdown with 1:09 to play. LSU's top-rated defense was yielding yards to Florida's sophomore quarterback Tim Tebow ? and points. On three straight possessions that started in the first quarter and ended in the third, Tebow took 27 snaps and drove UF (4-2, 2-2) a combined 224 yards for three touchdowns. Florida 24, LSU 14 ? and there was still 5:16 to play in the third quarter. "It may have looked like it, but there was never a doubt. Never," LSU quarterback Matt Flynn said. "We just needed to get some momentum going our way. We just had to keep battling and stay in the game until we got it." But it was a complex marriage of circumstances that brought the Tigers to the brink of victory, and three fourth-down plays that helped to decide the outcome. Over the game's final 20 minutes, LSU's defense rendered Tebow ineffective. On the Gators' final four possessions, only one got past midfield ? two ended with an interception and fumble. Tebow finished with 225 yards of total offense, but only 39 on the final four drives. "You keep hitting him and keep hitting him, eventually it takes a toll on a guy," LSU defensive coordinator Bo Pelini said of Tebow. "Believe me, he took some shots. He's a heckuva football player, but over time that adds up." That late performance by the defense gave the offense a chance ? three, in fact ? to define the season. On fourth-and-3 at the UF 4, Miles elected not to kick a field goal and got a 4-yard touchdown pass from Flynn to Demetrius Byrd to draw within 24-21 with 10:15 to play. On the final drive, LSU twice converted on fourth-and-1 on a pair of 2-yard runs by Hester. The second of those runs came at the UF 7-yard line when a field goal would have tied the score and most likely sent the game to overtime. But the conversion set-up Hester plowing over a mass of bodies at the goal line with 1:09 on the clock for the winning TD. "That just proves that Coach Miles has the confidence in us to put us out there on fourth-and-1 with the game, and maybe even the season, on the line," said Hester, who finished with a career-best 106 yards rushing. "It was awesome, really. It's fourth-and-1, they know what's coming, we know what's coming, and we go out and do it. That's what football is all about, and Coach Miles gave us that chance to prove ourselves with everything at stake." Earlier in the game on fourth down, backup quarterback Ryan Perrilloux scored LSU's first touchdown on a 1-yard run while Flynn took a fake field goal 8 yards for a first down, which led to a 4-yard score by tailback Keiland Williams. For the season, LSU is now 6-for-6 converting on fourth down. But five times in one game? Twice on the final drive with the nation's consensus No. 1 ranking (USA Today's top-rated USC had already lost 24-23 to Stanford) and an unbeaten record at stake? "If it wasn't for Coach Miles' decision to go for it like that, I don't know if the outcome would have been the same," Williams said. "Games like this sometimes come with risk, and those were the risks we were willing to take." Miles took pride in how his players responded. "They were asking me to bow my neck. They had already bowed their's," he said, reversing the question when asked about foregoing a tying field goal in the waning moments. "They just wanted me to call it ? to give them the chance. "I did that." Link To Original Article
