LSU’s Les Miles on Monday again took responsibility for the Tigers’ upset loss to Ole Miss, but it sounded like it took a group effort for the time management fiasco that killed any last hope of the pulling the game out.

Bottom line: “I wish I had all my 20 seconds back,” Miles said Monday about letting the game clock run down to just 6 seconds remaining until using his final time out before Ole Miss hit the game winning field goal.

The previous play had ended with approximately 28 seconds remaining at the LSU 24-yard line.

Miles said the staff had talked about it during the final drive through the headsets.

“The initial strategy was going to be to ice the kicker and block it,” Miles said. “I liked it. I figured I’d save the timeout for that.”

Miles said he was with the strategy initially before remembering that the Tigers had blocked the previous kick of Ole Miss’ Andrew Ritter.

“I bought into it for some amount of time. The problem with it is you really have him (the kicker) in the position you want him, he was just blocked.”

Miles said he changed his mind as the clock was ticking away.

“I said, ‘Hey, wait a minute, we have already blocked (a kick on) this team.’

“We could not be in any better position to go onto the field. And at that time I wished I had every one of those seconds back.”

Instead the kick was true with just 2 seconds remaining and the Tigers had only the ensuing kickoff to work with.

“We should have taken a time-out (at the end of the play), we would have had time to set up the block anyway. But it was the ‘ice’ in combination with the block that put us in that position. I’d much rather have had any amount of time on the clock at the back end.”

It likely would not have mattered. Even if they’d had an extra 20 seconds, it would have taken a major miracle to pull the game out. But Miles also took the blame for the hole LSU dug to get into that desperate spot.

“In my opinion, it’s me,” he said of the lackluster game-long performance. “I did not get it across to them. I made the points. I spoke the words. But I need to teach better. I challenge myself that way.”

LSU, which plays Furman of the FCS Southern Conference for its Homecoming game this week, took a mighty tumble from No. 6 to No. 13 in the polls.

Miles, who seemed more visibly shaken immediately after the loss than some others, said it was little consolation that the Tigers’ loss only completed a nutty day in which four other ranked SEC teams were also upset.

“Yeah, yeah … that’s all well and good,” he said. “It doesn’t happen to LSU. That’s the problem. It doesn’t happen to us.”

He said all phases of the team need to do some soul-searching, but mainly to relax and play within the system, both on offense and defense.

It was a problem early in the season, but Miles thought the Tigers had turned the corner last week in a victory over Florida.

“Our strength is (we’re) a team that thinks they can make every play,” he said. “Our weakness is, in this game, that they thought they had to make every play and that they needed to win the game with that play.

“To me, all they had to do was play the scheme … those are the kind of things that hurt us in that game.”

Miles used Zach Mettenberger’s three first-half interceptions as examples of the impatience of trying to win the game on every play rather than just playing it out.

“I think there’s a way to improve this team, really, offense, defense and special teams, with just a commitment and a comfort of playing the play that’s called and understanding your responsibility within that.

LSU head football coach Les Miles. (Associated Press)

Rogelio V. Solis