BATON ROUGE, La. — A week after having 14 penalties that proved to be costly in a home loss to BYU, the Arkansas Razorbacks (2-2, 0-1 SEC) had 11 penalties in a 34-31 loss against the No. 12 LSU Tigers on Saturday evening at Tiger Stadium.
Of the 11 penalties for 69 yards, nine of them came in the second half and seven of those were courtesy of the Razorback offense. Out of those seven offensive penalties, five were false starts, one was a holding and the other was a delay of game.
During the BYU loss, it was offensive line penalties that crushed the Hogs' hope of victory — specifically on the final drive of the game. This time around, the penalties didn't necessarily play as big of a factor in the game's outcome, but they sure didn't help.
"I was proud of the offense as far as their resiliency to come back and score," head coach Sam Pittman said after the game. "They overcame a lot of their own self-infliction with penalties. Jumping offsides. We had one on defense that crushed us on a 3rd-and-5.
"I thought our kids played extremely hard. We really thought we could come beat LSU tonight. We fell three points short, but give them all the credit because they found a way to win. We've got a good football team. We've got a lot to work on, but I like this team. I think they fight. I'm proud of our effort, but none of us are happy with the result."
The 3rd-and-5 penalty that Pittman alluded to was an offsides on defensive tackle Eric Gregory with 14:11 to play in the fourth quarter. That penalty allowed LSU a first down in the Arkansas red zone and three plays later the Tigers scored to take a 31-24 lead over the Hogs.
One penalty that ended up being pivotal looking back on it was a false start by right guard Josh Braun on the team's second drive of the game.
On third down with the ball on the LSU 1-yard line, Braun's false start pushed the ball back five yards and the next play was an incomplete pass to bring kicker Cam Little on for three points instead of seven. That's tough to miss out on four points by not having a touchdown on that drive, especially given the fact that the Hogs lost by three.
"Obviously had way too many penalties again," Pittman said on postgame radio. "We tried to simulate that in practice. Obviously it didn’t work."
Arkansas burned a pair of timeouts three plays apart from each other on its first drive of the third quarter, leaving the team with just one timeout remaining. Pittman was forced to call that final timeout with 14:52 left in the fourth quarter, which was just seconds after tight end Nathan Bax was called for back-to-back false starts.
"It wasn’t just on the (offensive) line," Pittman said. "It was tight ends and I ran out of timeouts. We couldn’t get the play in on time. And I had to burn timeouts on that situation and I was empty-handed at the end - so."
Even after those two penalties on Bax, Arkansas managed to score via a 59-yard connection from quarterback KJ Jefferson to freshman tight end Luke Hasz. Trailing LSU 24-22, the Hogs lined up for a two-point conversion attempt and redshirt senior left guard Brady Latham had a false start.
The Hogs lined up to go for two again and they were successful on another connection from Jefferson to Hasz to tie the game.
"Well, this atmosphere certainly has something to do with (the penalties)," Pittman said. "You'd be a fool not to think it did. But we had some checks in, obviously, where depending on what front they were in, and we just weren't getting set fast enough...
"We thought they were going to stem because it's loud. And we worked on it and evidently we've got to come up with another way to get that handled."
The end result wasn't what was expected, but Arkansas performed better than most thought. The Hogs were 17.5-point underdogs entering the game and the Battle for the Golden Boot was once again decided by three points for the fourth year in a row.
"I’m proud of our kids," Pittman said. "They played their ass off. But we didn’t play smart enough to win. We played hard enough. We just didn’t play smart enough."
Arkansas will look to rebound against the Texas A&M Aggies next Saturday at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. That game will be broadcast on ESPN or the SEC Network.
