| Good morning and Happy New Year's Eve from Houston. LSU started the year beating Wisconsin on Jan. 1 in the Reliaquest Bowl in Tampa. The Tigers end the year here taking on Baylor in the Texas Bowl. Kickoff is set for 2:30 p.m. The game will be on ESPN. This is the 12th game ever between the Tigers and the Bears (both 8-4 this season) but their first meeting since a 21-7 Baylor win in the 1985 Liberty Bowl. These two teams also met here in the 1963 Bluebonnet Bowl, a 14-7 win for the Bears. Baylor has moved out to a 4-point favorite, the team Dave Aranda now coaches over the team he used to be defensive coordinator for, helping LSU to win the 2019 national championship. Aranda perhaps saved his job after a 2-4 start earlier this year with a six-game winning streak. How did he do it? Wilson Alexander tells the tale: ------------------------------ HOUSTON — Before this year, Dave Aranda would spend the beginning of every offseason focused on things that really had nothing to do with football. He prioritized character development, charity work and academic performance, and while all of that matters, he devoted more time to what happened with his team off the field than how Baylor improved on it. But after a 3-9 season in 2023 put him on the hot seat, Aranda adjusted. In the past, Baylor’s early team meetings “really weren’t football” related, he said. This January, the Bears jumped straight into schematic installation between workouts. Michael Allen, a redshirt sophomore safety, noticed the change on the first day of offseason training. Allen said Aranda continued trying to develop players off the field, but there was a shift in approach. “Football took precedence over everything this year,” Allen said. “We walked in on Day One this year, and it was all about football. All about installs right away. I think having that at the forefront going into the season was big.” Aranda, the former LSU defensive coordinator, has tried to change parts of himself and the way he does things since leaving the Tigers at the end of the 2019 season. Being a head coach for the first time forced him to pull himself out of his shell, and Aranda decided to do something differently entering his fifth year at Baylor. Aranda grappled with prioritizing football so much. He never wanted wins to come at all costs. But after back-to-back losing seasons threatened his job status, Baylor plays LSU at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Texas Bowl. “I always hesitated to do that because I didn’t want to get where — I don’t know, I feel like you’re selling out to a degree," Aranda said. “We did football from the very beginning in January and February, and that’s all we did. I think I changed as a result of that. "I think to win, it all has to be about winning. And I think that’s the big difference.” There have been other changes over the past five years, and one of them was intentional. As LSU's defensive coordinator from 2016-19, Aranda oversaw one of the best defenses in the SEC and helped win a national championship. But he is already introverted, and Aranda said he drew further inward during his LSU tenure. He once told ESPN he wanted to become a head coach, in part, to force himself to talk more, hoping that would influence his children to do the same. Being the face of Baylor's program helped him stretch himself. “Any job where there's a lot of pressure, you can get small and you can focus on the craftsman-type things,” Aranda said. “For my kids' sake, I remember being at LSU and we were having a great season. You wanted to win, but it was kind of like a ‘we had to have it’ type of season. "It's crazy how the profession we're in, there's a bunch of seasons like that. To handle it better and to not close in like that, but to open up, is really the challenge. Because I think those are the moments with your family and your friends that matter. There's kind of some growing up to do. I'm thankful I went through all that.” Baylor had quick success under Aranda, going 12-2 with a Big 12 championship and Sugar Bowl win in his second season. But the Bears went a combined 9-16 the next two years. After Baylor finished 101st nationally in scoring offense in 2023, Aranda replaced the offensive coordinator. He also took over defensive play calling duties again, returning to his roots. “His teams at LSU are totally different defensively than the teams that he has at Baylor,” LSU coach Brian Kelly said. “He's going to put his defenses together based upon his personnel. He had outstanding personnel at LSU where he could play a lot more aggressive man coverage. He doesn't quite have the same personnel here at Baylor, and he does a great job mixing things up.” Even with the emphasis on football, Baylor was struggling halfway through the season. It entered an open date with a 2-4 record after three straight loses. One of them came at Colorado in overtime, another to BYU by one score. Hal Presley, a senior wide receiver, cried after every game in the losing streak. “[Aranda] made sure to never give up on us,” Presley said. “He kept us going no matter what. He kept pushing us. He didn't give up. After the losses we took, the fans and stuff like that, they didn't really like us like that. He made sure to keep us going in the right way, so I appreciate him.” Baylor’s next game came at Texas Tech, which had won five of its first six games. Allen spoke to his teammates beforehand, delivering a speech about continuing to believe in themselves despite the losses. "Once we got that belief, you saw what happened from there," Allen said. "That was all just reiterating what coach Aranda said all year about us having a good team and a good group of guys. I think it's important for those guys to know that.” Baylor won its next six games to end the regular season, and the school announced that Aranda would return next year. He would have been owed a nearly $17 million buyout, according to ESPN. Aranda attributed the midseason turnaround to confidence. “You get a small win, then you start believing a little bit more,” Aranda said. “I think to have a real strong belief without evidence is hard to do. I think especially when there's a lot of noise. To kind of get a little bit of success, get a real strong belief, can allow you to get bigger success.” “You have to learn how to walk to run,” linebacker Keaton Thomas said. “We relearned how to walk, and then we ran.” Moving forward, Aranda wants to build on that belief by winning more games. He understands the importance of them, saying they create respect. He still values character development and academics, but that was not the emphasis this season. “We've got to change the story about us,” Aranda said. “Winning does that. You want to win in the right way, and you want to be able to go about it the right way. I feel like we're doing that, but you've got to win.” That continues against LSU, the team that helped Aranda make a name for himself and propelled him to Baylor. He still has fond memories from the 2019 national championship season of quarterback Joe Burrow “picking a fight” with linebacker Patrick Queen at practice and telling the other defensive coaches, “Man, we can’t cover these guys,” after a preseason practice. That record-setting offense even forced Aranda to shift his defensive scheme from one-high safety with man coverage underneath. During spring practice before the 2019 season, he started going to more zone coverage and two high safeties. Then LSU won the national championship, and he can still remember fans rocking the bus on the way to the game. Aranda has not talked much about his past with LSU, players said this week. Thomas thought he would hear more about it, but Aranda is a “Zen master” who has not gotten emotional about facing his former team. “I'm rooting for LSU,” Aranda said. “Except for this game.” ------------------------------ In my game day column, I write about the convergence of history coming together with this LSU-Baylor matchup, and how the Tigers hope a win here in "Space City" could be the launching pad for their "moonshot" — a fifth national championship. Reed Darcey gives us his four keys to this game, and we've got our score predictions for the game from our LSU football beat team. Speaking of our beat team, Koki Riley was pinch-hitting for yours truly at the LSU gymnastics news conference, as coach Jay Clark gave an update on Haleigh Bryant's injury going into Friday's season opener against Iowa State. Reed's back, telling us what Kim Mulkey says about her 15-0 team's recurring slow starts heading into the start of conference play Thursday at Arkansas. And Toyloy Brown tells us where the men's basketball team is heading into its SEC slate, starting Saturday in the PMAC against Vanderbilt. As we come to the end of 2024, we just want to say thanks again for reading and subscribing. But it's not really the end. We'll continue to bring you the most in-depth LSU coverage around in 2025. See you then. Scott Rabalais | 
