Rosetta: Miles makes memory

• By RANDY ROSETTA
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Sep 22, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Most old coaches will tell you that they can remember losses a lot more than they do wins, even if there were a lot more of the latter.

Details are clearer when they make a withdrawal from the memory bank about a tough-to-digest setback. The euphoria after almost every victory blurs a little as time goes by.

Maybe LSU coach Les Miles follows that concept, maybe not.

A hunch here, though, that the Tigers’ fourth-year coach will latch onto Saturday’s 26-21 triumph for a long time.

It wasn’t exactly a thing of beauty, déjà vu for a number of games from last season — which played right into the Tigers’ hands, apparently.

“We’ve been here before,” Miles said, shrugging off the assumption that this team might have panicked. “Our guys play in tight quarters. That’s this league.”

There were plenty of blemishes to share time with the coming of age of a freshman quarterback and the continuing emergence of a hard-charging running back who is on a path to make it hard to not consider him a viable Heisman Trophy candidate.

Tidily wrapped up or not, though, it was a win at Auburn’s Jordan-Hare Stadium. That alone might make it hard for Miles to ever forget.

“Pride is enjoyed with victory and growth and seeing your team come of age and play really competitive football against a good team on the road,” Miles said in the manner that only he can.

It was a “victory achieved” against AU coach Tommy Tuberville, who may have been dethroned as the SEC’s Riverboat Gambler.

It was the first step of many more needed for LSU to keep clinging to the thought of staying in the hunt for back-to-back national championships.

Whatever chatter there is that Miles is winning with players he didn’t recruit should wither up and blow away for good. No matter who recruited which players, this is Miles’ program now and Saturday was another notch in his belt that Nick Saban couldn’t make.

Honestly, Miles’ stamp on LSU football was firmly imprinted a year ago. The talk of him winning with Saban’s players was misguided, hard to validate pot-stirring.