BATON ROUGE — Arkansas cornerback Matterral Richardson wasn’t sure what LSU had called for its two-point conversion attempt, but he knew what route he wasn’t going to let Demetrius Byrd run.

“No way I was letting him run a slant,” Richardson said. “He could have run anything else, but not a slant.”

Richardson was aware that Byrd already had caught two touchdown passes from Matt Flynn on slants against cornerback Michael Grant.

Flynn tried to hit Byrd on a slant again in the third overtime, but this time, it was Richardson who caught the ball in the end zone, preserving Arkansas’ 50-48 victory against No. 1 LSU on Friday at Tiger Stadium.

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“I don’t know how good my technique was, but I made [Byrd ] go the hard way, made him go around me on the outside,” said Richardson, a senior and threeyear starter. “Then I just turned around and the ball was right there.”

Byrd’s second touchdown catch had tied the game at 28 with 57 seconds left in the fourth quarter.

“We figured they were going to come back to it [on the twopoint try ],” Arkansas defensive coordinator Reggie Herring said. “We were preaching, ‘Don’t get beat inside,’ and Matterral just played it perfectly.”

It was especially sweet for Arkansas’ defense to make the game-clinching play to beat LSU after suffering late breakdowns in losses to Alabama, Kentucky and Auburn.

“We just kept saying, just make one play, just make one play and the game’s over, ’” Herring said. “It got strung out a little further than we wanted to, but thank God our offense had the heart to keep sticking it to LSU’s defense. Then we finally came up with a play to win the game.”

Arkansas led 7-6 at halftime but could have been behind 21-7 had the defense not hung tough when the Tigers began drives at the Razorbacks 25 (after Darren McFadden fumbled the opening kickoff ) and at the 50 and LSU 44 after Jeremy Davis shanked punts out of bounds for 22 and 23 yards.

Instead of turning that field position into three touchdowns, the Tigers had to settle for two field goals by Colt David.

“Things could have gotten out of hand in the first half if we hadn’t come up with critical stops,” Herring said. “We needed to do that to give our offense a chance to get going in the second half.”

Arkansas’ defensive players said they didn’t get discouraged by the early field-position challenges.

“That’s part of the game,” Arkansas senior defensive tackle Marcus Harrison said. “We’re supposed to put the fires out. That’s what we did.”

Senior middle linebacker Weston Dacus said he knew the Razorbacks’ defense could step up.

“We were hungry for this game,” Dacus said. “We knew we could beat them.”

LSU figured to have the momentum after sending the game into overtime, but Dacus said the defense wasn’t demoralized.

“It was tough, but we knew our offense was on a roll and we just had to hang in there on defense,” Dacus said. “We had to man up and not worry about being tired. We fought our guts out.”

Arkansas came into the game ranked eighth in the SEC in pass defense (211. 4 yards per game ) and had allowed 18 touchdown passes.

“My hat’s off to the secondary,” Herring said. “We’ve scrutinized them so hard, and to have one of our corners make the final play, it couldn’t have been scripted any better.”