BATON ROUGE - In LSU's season opener to USC, the Tigers had 10 penalties for 99 yards. A few of those penalties came from mistakes made by veteran players.

Kyren Lacy received an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty while celebrating his touchdown in the third quarter. Major Burns received a personal foul penalty for removing his helmet while still on the field after LSU's defense got a stop on fourth down.

Penalties such as those are very avoidable and head coach Brian Kelly was not angry with his players because he knew they did not mean to hurt the team with their actions.

"Kyren is working on his emotional control. If you were here that young man, I love him because he's working on that every day. He didn't that wasn't like malice, that wasn't like it. It's just he is such a high, strong young man that that's all he works on. I was angry at the circumstances because he's working on it. Same thing with Major Burns. I mean, he was so apologetic and so sorry that he took his helmet off. These aren't guys that are just like, 'I don't care. That doesn't matter to me,' These guys are working so hard at it. That's why I want so much for them," Kelly said Tuesday following the game.

The head coach also wants his guys to be focused on the moment in front of them in the game instead of worrying about things that are out of their control. Kelly wants his team to be in the moment and take over each rep they have. 

"You just have to continue to build a mindset amongst your guys that the focus is on dominating that play. And we're still working on that every single day, about dominating the play that's in front of us. And sometimes we get outside of that, we start thinking big picture, and the game is over, or if we get one more stop, forget about one more stop. Think about this play right now, and you know, we're still building that with our group," Kelly said.

It's unknown whether those penalties could've changed the outcome of the game if they never occurred, but all LSU can do from this point on is learn from it and prepare for the next 11 games ahead.

The Tigers host Nicholls State for their home opener Saturday at 6:30.