LAS VEGAS — Brian Kelly slammed his left fist so hard on the press conference table that his water bottle nearly fell over.

After No. 13 LSU blew a four-point lead with just under six minutes left in its season opener and fell 27-20 to No. 23 USC, Kelly didn’t hold back when discussing his frustrations.

“We played a couple guys’ asses off tonight and we’re sitting here again, we’re sitting here again talking about the same things!” Kelly said as he pounded the table. “About not finishing when you’ve got an opponent in a position to put them away. But what we do on the sideline is feel like the game is over.”

Kelly said this is the first time during his time at LSU that he’s “mad” at his team and added that they lack the “killer instinct.”

“I’m so angry about it that I have to do something about it. I’m not doing a good enough job as a coach,” Kelly said. “I have to coach them better because it’s unacceptable that we didn’t find a way to win this football game. It’s ridiculous. It’s insane.”

Despite having 421 total yards of offense and controlling the time of possession by six minutes, Kelly’s team failed to capitalize. Their first drive of the game went 74 yards on 13 plays in over seven minutes, but resulted in zero points. Although they trailed for most of the first half, LSU managed to take the lead twice in the third quarter.

“Unfortunately, it’s clear that when we get into a game, we don’t know how to conduct ourselves,” Kelly said. “You’ve got to put teams away. We had a chance to put this team away. We get complacent, we make more mistakes when we’re ahead instead of having, you know, better focus and a steely, killer instinct. It’s disappointing.”

To Kelly’s point, the Tigers had 10 penalties for 99 yards to the Trojans’ six, and a couple of them came at crucial moments. On USC’s game-winning drive, a targeting penalty on LSU put the Trojans in the red zone, where they promptly scored the winning score with eight seconds left.

It wasn’t just penalties that put LSU in a position to come up short. Their ground game struggled as well. Earlier in the week, LSU offensive lineman Will Campbell had said the Tigers would run the ball against the Trojans.

“That’s not something we’re trying to keep a secret,” Campbell said Tuesday. “I’m telling everybody now. We’re going to run the ball.”

By the end of the night, however, LSU had just 117 yards on the ground and had to rely on quarterback Garrett Nussmeier to fuel their offense. Nussmeier nearly did just that, throwing for over 300 yards and two touchdowns, but after scoring the go-ahead touchdown in the third quarter, LSU’s offense stalled and allowed USC’s new defense under defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn to keep the Trojans in the game with several key third-down stops.

“They had every right to be confident,” Lincoln Riley said of LSU’s offensive line. “But so did we. We just didn’t talk about it in the media.”

Of the 13 third downs the Tigers faced, they converted only five first downs. After scoring a go-ahead touchdown in the third quarter, LSU’s next four drives resulted in two punts, a field goal and an interception by Nussmeier that sealed the outcome.

“To become the kind of football team I want, we’ve got to eliminate the dumb mistakes,” Kelly said. “Finally, we’ve got to play much better together.”