It was a rough one for Auburn backers tonight. Here's how tomorrow's story starts:

BATON ROUGE, La. — Auburn and LSU have produced some thrilling games in recent years, instant classics that always seemed to come down to the final minute.

Saturday's meeting will not fall under that classification.

No. 9 LSU dominated from beginning to end in a 31-10 victory at Tiger Stadium on Saturday night, sending a reeling Auburn to its third straight loss and making Gene Chizik's 5-0 start seem like nothing more than a distant memory.

"I'd say they beat us in about every phase of the football game, from beginning to the end and probably everywhere in between," Chizik said. "We obviously have a lot of room for improvement."

We've got a long drive ahead of us tonight, so I'll try to make this postmortem brief. Here are some notes and quotes:

• Offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn's once-dominant group has hit the wall. Auburn finished with season lows in yards (193) and points (10). "We got exposed in some areas," Chizik said. "I think that was evident."

• Quarterback Chris Todd struggled mightily, going 8-for-14 for 47 yards. He was sacked four times and turned the ball over twice, once on a fumble and once on an interception. Neil Caudle replaced him and led Auburn to its only touchdown, a 1-yard pass to Philip Lutzenkirchen with three seconds left. Here's how Chizik answered a question about re-evaluating his quarterback situation this week: "We'll look at everything. Of course that's the natural question that everybody's going to raise, but it was protection, running the football, throwing the football — we got beat tonight. ... The whole offense right now is unproductive. You have 42 yards at halftime. You can't pin that on one guy. Not the last time I checked."

• And here's Malzahn's take on the quarterback situation: "We look at every position every week. It was a team loss. We’ve got to find a way to correct it and get better each week.Each week you look at it and you put the best players on the field that give you the best chance of winning. That’s what we do."

• Auburn's defense didn't fare much better. LSU ranked 112th nationally in total offense entering the game but finished with 376 yards. Although RB Charles Scott didn't get going (10 carries, 20 yards), QB Jordan Jefferson was 21-for-31 for 242 yards and two touchdowns. He added another score on the ground.

• "They whupped our butts," cornerback Walt McFadden said bluntly. "They’re a great team. We have to learn from our mistakes and try to make sure it doesn’t happen next week."

• Silver lining of the night? LB Eltoro Freeman returned to the starting lineup after dealing with personal issues the last few weeks and finished with a team-high 12 tackles, with a sack and two tackles for a loss. He had seven tackles in his first five games.

• Until Saturday, LSU had not beaten Auburn in three consecutive seasons since 1935-37.

• We'll give wide receivers coach Trooper Taylor the final word. "There are no short cuts," he said. "If there were, we'd give it to them."