BATON ROUGE — Winning season openers 73-0 doesn't do much for Brian Kelly.

Kelly much prefers the open with the likes of a USC or a Florida State, or a similar test out of the gate for his squad. So far in his short LSU football tenure, openers haven't gone the Tigers' way, including Sunday night's 27-20 defeat to No. 23 USC in Las Vegas.

But the benefits for the LSU coach, win or lose, are bountiful and opening the season with high-caliber opponents expedites the development of his team, he said.

"We know a lot more about our team, we know about what we need to do better as coaches as a development of a football team," Kelly told reporters during his weekly news conference Tuesday. "I don't necessarily think the opener, winning it 73-0 gives you much benefit. You go into Week 2 with a lot of questions about who you are. I got a good feeling about this football team."

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Other preseason-ranked teams, even fellow SEC football members like Ole Miss, which beat Furman 76-0, Alabama, who dismantled Western Kentucky 63-0 and Oklahoma, who decimated Temple 44-3 to kickoff the 2024 season this past week, have long decided to go the seemingly "cupcake" route to ease into football season.

Kelly understands there are risks, rewards and consequences of scheduling tougher teams in Week 1 — his LSU teams have dealt in more consequence in his three season openers thus far with three losses.

And over the course of the next few years, LSU's season openers aren't going to get much easier. Next season it'll start a home-and-home series with Clemson with the first game happening on the road Aug. 30, 2025.

"We're going to be a better football team. I wanted to win the game, our whole state wants to win the game, everybody that falls LSU wants to win the game. But we're going to be a better football team because of what happened," Kelly said. "It would've been better had we had won the game.

"Our margin now is a razor thin margin when you lose a football game like this. But we're developing a football team and this was important. We're going to be better as a team going into Week 2.

"This is going to be a good team, we got some work to do but we're going to get this team to the point where we're balanced in all three phases. When we complement each other, offensively and defensively, it's going to be a good football team."

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Cory Diaz covers the LSU Tigers for The Daily Advertiser as part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow his Tigers coverage on Twitter: @ByCoryDiaz. Got questions regarding LSU athletics? Send them to Cory Diaz at bdiaz@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: Why LSU football's Brian Kelly wants to play good teams to open season