BATON ROUGE, La. - The last play of the first half seemed of only minor importance when it occurred.

LSU said "no thanks" to a chip-shot field goal in hopes of adding one more touchdown to a three-touchdown lead in the last minute of the first half.

Quarterback JaMarcus Russell then scrambled from the pass pocket for an 8-yard gain to the Tennessee 5-yard line. Those might be the most meaningless yards he ever gains.

The yards didn't matter. The time did. When Russell went down, LSU was out of timeouts.

That's how the first half ended. And that's how the new game began.

When the game finally ended, with running back Gerald Riggs in the LSU end zone and UT on top 30-27, the first half seemed like nothing more than a bad dream to anyone who dreams in orange.

UT has come back from greater deficits. And it has come back against better teams.

But it has never rallied under more adverse circumstances when more was riding on the outcome.

UT wasn't just losing a game Monday night at Tiger Stadium. An entire season was slipping away.

The team began the season with national championship aspirations, but those hopes might have vanished in a 16-7 loss in The Swamp. Everything else was disappearing in the Louisiana bayou.

You couldn't have made a compelling argument for so much as an SEC East title if the Vols had lost to LSU. For all practical purposes, this much-anticipated season would have ended in September.

But the Vols didn't let it. Rick Clausen didn't let it.

You think the UT season was buried in the first half? How about Clausen's career after the Florida loss?

Two days after losing to the Gators, UT coach Phillip Fulmer said Erik Ainge was his starting quarterback.

Translation: No more quarterback competition, no more quarterback rotation, no more indecision. And no more Clausen.

From the end of last season to the beginning of this season, I never thought anyone other than Ainge would be this team's quarterback. He won the job as a freshman, lost it to injury and would win it back on sheer talent.

Or so I thought.

But not after what Clausen pulled off against the nation's fourth-ranked team. He came off the bench to complete 21 of 32 passes for 196 yards and a touchdown.

He didn't just put up numbers. He pulled together a team that was falling apart.

Fulmer credited Clausen for saving last season after UT's first two quarterbacks - Ainge and Brent Schaeffer - were injured. Clausen saved another season Monday night.

But this time, he didn't beat Kentucky or Vanderbilt. He beat a team with national championship aspirations of its own.

He also beat his old team.

Three years ago, the only team LSU fans thought Clausen could beat was his own. Their lasting memory of him was his only start, as a freshman against Ole Miss. He completed five of 12 passes for 35 yards and an interception. The only potential he showed was for disaster.

The former high school All-Americans made the mistakes this time. Never mind their arm strength or size or talent. Clausen showed Ainge and Russell there's much more to playing quarterback than throwing tight spirals that can leave an imprint of a football on a receiver's chest.

Ainge looked shell-shocked when he desperately flung an interception from his own end zone just before he was leveled by linebacker Cameron Vaughn late in the first half. Kenneth Hollis returned the wayward throw 3 yards for a touchdown to give LSU a 21-0 lead that might as well have been 41-0 the way UT was stumbling around.

Russell wasn't much better at times. He killed one first-half drive with a fumble, completed only three of nine passes for 13 yards in the second half, and set up UT's third touchdown with an inexplicable throw to UT safety Jonathan Hefney, who returned the interception 26 yards to the LSU 2-yard line.

While more heralded quarterbacks were falling all around him, Clausen steadied the UT offense. He was more than a "calming influence" as his coaches like to call him. He was a catalyst.

And the next time UT's coaches decide to give another quarterback a snap with the game on the line, the offense should walk off the field.