Posted by ESPN.com's Chris Low

There’s a hollow tone to senior middle linebacker Jacob Cutrera’s voice when he discusses LSU’s 31-23 season-opening win over Washington.

Yes, the Tigers won. Yes, they overcame the dreaded cross-country trip that gets a lot of teams. And, yes, they made plays when they had to.

	Mark J. Rebilas-US PRESSWIRE
	Jacob Cutrera's first-quarter interception return for a touchdown was a key play in LSU's win over Washington.

But if you think Cutrera or anybody on LSU’s defense is satisfied heading into Saturday night’s home opener with Vanderbilt, think again.

“The first game wasn’t what we wanted or how we expect to play,” Cutrera said. “After looking at the tape, it really came down to about five plays -- missed tackles, some mistakes, whatever it was. That’s where they got about half their yards.

“We’ve made a lot of corrections. The technique could have been better, and we know that. We know what went wrong.

“I think everybody’s going to see a different defense against Vanderbilt.”

A win’s a win, but there’s no denying that LSU’s defensive pride was bruised last week, especially given the way the Tigers underachieved on defense last season.

It’s obvious that nobody on this defense plans on going down that road again.

“We want to dominate teams,” Cutrera said. “We’ll learn from that first game and go on.”

Cutrera, who's in his first season as a full-time starter, had the play in the first half that kept things from really getting hairy for the Tigers. He read Washington quarterback Jake Locker’s eyes at the line of scrimmage and was able to get his hands up just in time to deflect a Locker bullet.

“We had been blitzing the first series and I kind of walked up like we were going to blitz again,” Cutrera said. “I saw him looking over like he was going to throw the hot route or the slant. I was the zone dropper there, and he threw it quick. I tipped it up and it came straight back down to me.”

Cutrera held on and scooted 29 yards for a touchdown to give LSU a 10-7 lead in the first quarter. Had it not been for Cutrera’s play, who knows how that first half might have gone? The Huskies had 296 of their 478 yards by halftime.

LSU first-year defensive coordinator John Chavis said this week that he thought his guys were in too much of a “thinking mode.” Chavis wants to seem them play more instinctively against the Commodores.

Cutrera conceded that Washington’s zone read stuff kept LSU off-balance defensively for much of the game.

But regardless of how ugly the final numbers might have looked, Cutrera said the Tigers would be better for having played that game.

“We’d never traveled that far before,” Cutrera said. “For us to keep the focus and come out with the win will make us a better team. We matured, got the first game out of the way and all the rust knocked off. It may not have looked great, but that game’s going to help this defense down the road.”