LSU down two potential starters vs. South Alabama
On Thursday, LSU head coach Brian Kelly listed wide receiver Chris Hilton as probable and cornerback Zy Alexander as questionable for Saturday’s game against South Alabama. However, an hour before kickoff, Hilton and Alexander were both not suited up for warm ups and reportedly out for the game against the Jaguars. This comes after Harold Perkins was ruled out for the season on Sunday night with a knee injury.
Alexander left the game against UCLA with a concussion and has been going through concussion protocol throughout the week and was unable to get cleared before kickoff. The secondary is set to be tested against a talented South Alabama offense and without Alexander, JK Johnson has received more snaps as the season went on while freshman PJ Woodland continues to work his way into the mix early in his career.
Even though Hilton was probable, Brian Kelly said “we’re bringing him back from a long layoff, so we’ll see what he looks like when he gets out there on Saturday.” Hilton has missed the first five games of the season with a bone bruise.
Kelly said weeks ago that it’s something he’s going to have to play through at some point, but will the extra two weeks off get him back to 100 percent? That’s what we don’t know at the moment. Still, this is an LSU offense that could use his top-end speed on the perimeter.
Moving on without Perkins
The big injury news of the week was Harold Perkins being ruled out for the season with a knee injury he sustained against UCLA. West weeks has missed the last two games but is expected to return this week to further shore up the linebacker room with Perkins out.
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“We made some slight changes,” Kelly said. “We activated Xavier Atkins in the second group. We got West Weeks back, so we feel really good about the linebacker rotation. If we needed to play three linebackers we can do that. If we play two with a Nickel we can do that. We had a really good week of practice. Our guys will play well. We feel terrible about Harold, but our guys have moved on and had a good week of practice.”
Kelly went on to talk about later in his press conference the fact that Whit Weeks fills that role Perkins had in terms of playing in space and covering ground, but Perkins’ pass rushing ability will be missed.
Along with Perkins, LSU has lost defensive tackle Jacobian Guillory and running back John Emery for the season through four games this year. LSU looks to improve to 4-1 on Saturday night on SEC Network as chaos continues to shake up the SEC this week.
