No. 20 Ole Miss set program records and rebuffed a second-half surge to upset No. 13 LSU 55-49 for its first SEC win of the season. With 104 combined points, the Rebels and the Tigers set a new bar for their rivalry, as well as the 2023 season as a whole. The Week 5 shootout surpasses Washington's 59-32 win against California for most points scored between FBS teams this season.
Ole Miss' 55 points were its most scored against a team ranked in the AP Top 25. The Rebels also set a school record with 711 yards against an SEC opponent. In all, the two teams combined for 1,343 total yards of offense. Ole Miss running back Quinshon Judkins, a preseason first-team All-American, notched his first 100-yard game of the season with 177 yards rushing and one touchdown on a whopping 33 carries.
Ironically, though, it was Ole Miss' defense in the spotlight towards the end of the game. The Rebels scored a go-ahead touchdown with 39 seconds remaining in the game -- a nifty 13-yard catch and run by receiver Tre Harris on a screen from Jaxson Dart -- a little too much time for an explosive LSU offense armed with two timeouts -- and the Tigers came very close to making them pay for leaving too much time on the clock.
Immediately, LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels found wideout Chris Hilton Jr. for a gain of 42 yards to Ole Miss' 33-yard line. Two plays later, Rebels defensive back DeShawn Gaddie Jr. dropped an easy interception. Then, linebacker Jeremiah Jean-Baptiste was called for a horse-collar tackle on Daniels.
That moved the ball to Ole Miss' 16-yard line with about 12 seconds on the clock, but a pair of false starts with an incompletion sandwiched in between put the Tigers at second-and-20 with five seconds left. The teams traded timeouts before LSU's last-ditch effort fell to the turf in the end zone.
LSU went 5 for 9 on third down with well north of 600 yards of total offense and still lost. Daniels actually outdueled Dart with comparable passing numbers (414 yards, 4 TDs) but ran for another 99 yards and another score.