Spikes responds to being called out

Player of the game

By Edward Aschoff

Correspondent

BATON ROUGE — With pain shooting through his leg from the irritating tendinitis in his Achilles, Florida linebacker Brandon Spikes made it an effort to get to his man on every play.

He had to. He and his teammates had to after listening to college football analysts calling him and his unit out earlier in the day.

Spikes had to make a statement, not just for himself, but for his defense. A defense that had yet to show what it was capable of doing on the biggest stage.

Both passed in Florida's 13-3 win over No. 4 LSU Saturday night.

Whether he was blitzing from the right — or left — or he was keying in on one of LSU's running backs, Spikes stayed on top of his game.

"Brandon Spikes, he's a great leader," safety Will Hill said. "He came out and told us what we need to do and we came out and did it. He led by example, coming out making all these plays. After each play he came to the defense saying, 'Next play, let's do it. We gotta do it.'"

Spikes finished the day with a team-high 11 tackles. He had 2.5 sacks, and forced a fumble. After forcing LSU quarterback Jordan Jefferson to fumble, he promptly tackled the unsuspecting lineman who had recovered the ball.

To make things difficult for LSU's offense, which finished with 162 total yards on the night, Spikes lined up all over the field. He played in the middle, was a defensive end and played both at the strong and weak side linebacker positions. But it was his intensity throughout the game that really impressed his teammates.

"Brandon Spikes had a great game this game," senior linebacker Ryan Stamper said. "All the emotion he had on the field, man, just got the whole defense playing at the level he was playing it."

One of Spikes' sacks came at a critical moment in the game when Florida's momentum had all but died after kicker Caleb Sturgis missed a 20-yard field goal in the third quarter. With LSU facing a third-and-16 Spikes hung tough through LSU's line before finally colliding head-on with Jefferson for a 6-yard loss on the play.

With LSU trying to make some sort of push in the fourth, Spikes again halted that with another sack of Jefferson.

With a fourth-and-1 at the LSU 39, the Tigers went into the shotgun formation. UF's secondary locked down coverage, forcing Jefferson to scramble, but he was met three yards in the backfield by a feisty Spikes.

Criticism has come Spikes' way this season, but Stamper said he hopes that is put to rest after Spikes responded in the fiercest environment in front of the entire country.

"We were talking about it before the game that big players step up in big games, and Brandon Spikes felt like he got called out earlier in the day on ESPN by (Kirk) Herbstreit. He felt like he got called out, so I guess he stepped up tonight."