BATON ROUGE, La. – During Monday’s presser, LSU head coach Ed Orgeron said the Tigers have cases of COVID-19 on the team, and the Tigers could end up with a thin roster come kickoff.

“I can tell you that we do have players that have COVID, and we do have some players that are quarantined. I can’t tell you the numbers. I’m going to let the doctors take care of all of that,” Orgeron said.

According to SEC guidelines, LSU will need at least 53 players on scholarships to still play Saturday’s game, but the Tigers had just 70 scholarship athletes before the outbreak. Coach O dealt with a similar situation during his time on the west coast.

“You know, at USC when I took over for Lane, we were on probation, and I think we had — I don’t remember quite the number, but around 55. That’s where I learned how to practice like the NFL. So it worked well with us. I remember we beat Stanford, No. 4 team in the country, we only used 12 players on defense,” Orgeron said.

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