HOUSTON (AP) — When Baylor and LSU face off in the Texas Bowl on Tuesday, it will be the first meeting between the teams since the 1985 Liberty Bowl.
But they do have some familiarity with one another. Baylor coach Dave Aranda spent 2016-19 on the LSU staff, helping the Tigers to the 2019 national championship as defensive coordinator before leaving for Waco.
“It’s really cool,” Aranda said. “So many good memories and such great people, and such respect and appreciation for all of it. How my family was treated, just all of it.”
And he still holds an affinity for the school.
“I’m rooting for LSU — except for this game,” Aranda said.
Aranda’s Bears (8-4) enter the game on a high note with a six-game winning streak that came after they won just two of their first six games this season.
“I think there’s some momentum going,” Aranda said. “You get that momentum by winning, and that’s what we’ve been able to do. And we’ve got to be able to continue to do that, in any circumstance. I think if we do that, it puts us in a good position for next year, to be able to win some more.”
LSU (8-4) has won two in a row after a three-game skid as the Tigers head into their third bowl appearance under coach Brian Kelly.
“The game is such an interesting one in that momentum, belief, confidence, they all play a role,” Kelly said. “When teams are fairly equal — and that’s what the case is — all those things that I just mentioned play a role. You’re playing a team that believes they’re going to win. They’ve won games that they hadn’t won in a long time. They’ve gotten all that out of the way. So, that’s probably the biggest challenge.”
These teams both feature veteran quarterbacks in LSU’s Garrett Nussmeier and Baylor’s Sawyer Robertson.
Nussmeier ranks second in the Southeastern Conference and sixth in the nation with 3,739 yards passing and his 26 TD passes are second in the SEC. In 13 career starts, he has thrown at least two touchdown passes nine times and thrown for more than 300 yards eight times, including seven this season.
He’s led the Tigers to a 9-4 record as a starter.
Robertson leads the Big 12 with an 83.9 quarterback rating that ranks sixth in the nation. He started his career with the late coach Mike Leach at Mississippi State before transferring to Baylor last season.
He has thrown for a career-high 2,626 yards with 26 touchdowns and seven interceptions this season.
LSU will be without several top players Tuesday after tight end Mason Taylor, receiver Kyren Lacy and tackles Will Campbell and Emery Jones opted out as they prepare for the NFL draft.
Taylor, the son of NFL Hall of Fame Jason Taylor, had 55 receptions for a career-high 546 yards and two touchdowns as a junior before declaring for the draft earlier this month.
Lacy led the Tigers with 866 yards receiving and nine touchdowns and ends his career with 2,360 yards receiving.
Baylor receiver Josh Cameron leads the team with nine touchdown receptions this season, which ranks 11th in school history. His 44 receptions for 643 yards also lead the team and are both career highs.
The performance comes after he didn’t score a touchdown in his first two seasons.
Cameron is also the team’s punt returner, and he ranks second in the country by averaging 20.7 yards per return.
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FILE - LSU quarterback Garrett Nussmeier (13) passes in the first half of an NCAA college football game against Vanderbilt in Baton Rouge, La., Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
FILE - Baylor head coach Dave Aranda watches his team warm up before an NCAA college football game against Iowa State, Saturday, Oct. 5, 2024, in Ames, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI says it recovered the black banner of the Islamic State group from the truck that an American man from Texas smashed into New Year's partygoers in New Orleans' French Quarter, killing 15 people.
The investigation is expected to look in part at any support or inspiration that driver Shamsud-Din Jabbar may have drawn from that violent Middle East-based group or from any of at least 19 affiliated groups around the world.
President Joe Biden said Wednesday evening that the FBI had told him that “mere hours before the attack, (Jabbar) posted videos on social media indicating that he was inspired” by IS.
Routed from its self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria and Iraq by a U.S. military-led coalition more than five years ago, IS has focused on seizing territory in the Middle East more than on staging massive al-Qaida-style attacks on the West.
But in its home territory, IS has welcomed any chance to behead Americans and other foreigners who come within its reach. The main group at peak strength claimed a handful of coordinated operations targeting the West, including a 2015 Paris plot that killed 130 people. It has had success, although abated in recent years, in inspiring people around the world who are drawn to its ideology to carry out ghastly attacks on innocent civilians.
Here's a look at IS, its current status, and some of the offshoot armed groups and so-called lone wolves that have killed under the group's flag.
The main group also goes by IS, ISIS, or the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
It began as a breakaway group from al-Qaida.
Under leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, IS had seized stunning amounts of territory in Iraq and Syria by 2014. Within territory under its control, it killed, raped and otherwise abused members of other faiths and targeted fellow Sunni Muslims who strayed from its harsh interpretation of Islam.
By 2019, a U.S.-led military intervention had driven IS from the cities and towns of its self-claimed state. Al-Baghdadi killed himself, and two children near him, that same year, detonating an explosive vest as U.S. forces closed in on him.
Currently, the main IS is a scattered and much weakened organization working to regain fighting strength and territory in Syria and Iraq. Experts warn that the group is reconstituting itself there.
And that flag? Typically, it's a black banner with white Arabic letters expressing a central tenet of the Islamic faith. Countless Muslims around the world see the coercive violence of the group as a perversion of their religion.
Some experts argue that IS is powerful today partly as a brand, inspiring both militant groups and individuals in attacks that the group itself may have no real role in.
The group's credo and military successes have led armed extremist organizations in Africa, Asia and Europe to swear allegiance to it. It's a greatly decentralized alliance.
Many of the offshoot groups have carried out lethal attacks. Islamic State-Khorasan, an Afghanistan-based group, is one of the most lethal currently. Attacks linked to that affiliate include the March 2024 killings of about 130 people at a Moscow theater, the August 2021 bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members and about 170 Afghans as the U.S. was withdrawing from Afghanistan, and killings in Pakistan and elsewhere.
The New Orleans rampage reflects the deadliest IS-inspired attack on U.S. soil in several years.
Other attacks over the past decade include a 2014 shooting rampage by a husband-and-wife team who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, and a 2016 massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, by a gunman who fatally shot 49 people, pledged his allegiance on a 911 call to al-Baghdadi and raged against the “filthy ways of the West.”
Those attacks coincided with an influx of thousands of Westerners — some of them Americans — who traveled to Syria in hopes of joining the so-called caliphate.
In the aftermath of those killings, the threat from radicalized followers of the group had appeared to wane in the Defense Department strikes have taken out other IS members and the FBI has had significant success in disrupting plots before they come to fruition.
But over the past year, FBI officials have warned about a significantly elevated threat of international terrorism following Hamas’ rampage in Israel in October 2023 and the resulting Israeli strikes in Gaza.
The SITE intelligence group reported IS supporters celebrating in online chat groups Wednesday.
“If it’s a brother, he’s a legend. Allahu Akbar,” or “God is great,” it quoted one as saying.
President Joe Biden makes a statement on the latest developments in New Orleans from Camp David, Md., Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Emergency services attend the scene on Bourbon Street after a vehicle drove into a crowd on New Orleans' Canal and Bourbon Street, Wednesday Jan. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
This undated passport photo provided by the FBI on Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025, shows Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar. (FBI via AP)
A black flag with white lettering lies on the ground rolled up behind a pickup truck that a man drove into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing and injuring a number of people, early Wednesday morning, Jan. 1, 2025. The FBI said they recovered an Islamic State group flag, which is black with white lettering, from the vehicle. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
