When LSU took a 17-7 lead over the Texas A&M Aggies into the halftime locker room on Saturday night, all the signs were pointing to the Tigers scoring a huge road win and leaving the weekend as the only team in the SEC with a perfect in-conference record. After all, per ESPN Research, LSU had won 104 straight games in which they lead by ten points or more at halftime, and the Aggies had lost 26 in a row when they trailed by at least 10 points at the break.

For Mike Elko's squad to reverse course, it would require the Aggies to make a drastic 2nd half change, and that's exactly what happened. With starting quarterback Conner Weigman struggling to get anything going in the 1st half, Elko turned to back-up quarterback Marcel Reed, and the redshirt freshman proved to be the spark that Texas A&M needed to overcome a 10-point deficit and years of history.

Thanks to the spark that Marcel Reed provided, Texas A&M outscored LSU 31-6 in the 2nd half, running away with a 38-23 win over the 8th-ranked Tigers. After the game, Mike Elko praised his young quarterback while explaining what went into the decision to make the switch from Weigman to Reed.

“Obviously unbelievable credit to Marcel Reed to be ready to go tonight,” Elko said, according to Dave Wilson of ESPN.com. “It certainly wasn't Conner's fault. There weren't a lot of open windows. We couldn't get the passing game unglued at all. We couldn't call it right. I couldn't get them to run it right. We couldn't get open. It was just a litany of problems. Conner didn't throw it well at times. We just felt like we needed a spark and we pulled the trigger and went with Marcel and what a spark he gave us.”

Fortunately for the Aggies, Marcel Reed had seen the field plenty in his two years in College Station. Not only did Reed get a start in A&M's Texas Bowl loss to Oklahoma State last year, but due to a Conner Weigman injury, Reed earned three starts for the Aggies this year. In those games, three A&M wins, Reed completed 56 percent of his passes for 514 yards and 6 touchdowns. Most importantly, he didn't throw an interception in those three starts while adding 187 yards and 2 touchdowns on the ground.

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Following the win, Reed spoke about what he saw on the field and why he was able to have so much success against an LSU defense that had stifled Texas A&M's offense for the entire 1st half.

“They were just crashing, crashing at our running backs,” Reed said. “If they crashed, I pull the ball and run. And you see they did it a lot and I got a lot of opportunities to get some space and run and they didn't really make any adjustments. So that's all it was.”

Marcel Reed made the Tigers overaggressive defense pay. He ran the ball nine times for 62 yards and three touchdowns. He was only required to throw the ball two times, completing both passes for a total of 70 yards, which included a 54-yard completion to Aggies leading receiver Noah Thomas. In the 1st half, Conner Weigman completed just 6-of-18 pass attempts for 64 yards.

Texas A&M will visit South Carolina next Saturday night with hopes of improving to 6-0 in SEC play.