The ball came off Kam Franklin's helmet, hung in the air above the end zone like it wanted to be part of the story too, and fell into Jaylon Braxton's hands. On the LSU sideline, Lane Kiffin dropped into a low crouch with both hands pressed on his white visor. Around him, 70,033 people at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium got the ending they'd been dreaming about since Nov. 30, when their old coach left town on a private jet LSU sent to pick him up.

Final: No. 8 Ole Miss 32, No. 7 LSU 24. The Grove has its revenge.

Trinidad Chambliss turned the first half into a statement

For a whole week Kiffin talked about Chambliss like a man describing a hurricane headed for his house. Then the hurricane showed up. Chambliss threw for 363 yards and two touchdowns, and at one stretch in the first half he was 15-of-19 for 173 yards as the Rebels built a 17-0 lead. Kewan Lacy powered in from 5 yards out. Traylon Ray, who finished with seven catches for 115 yards, went up over two defenders for a 36-yard grab and later caught a 21-yard touchdown over the middle.

LSU finally put together a 17-play, 75-yard drive capped by Dilin Jones' 2-yard run to make it 17-7 with 1:57 left before halftime. For Chambliss, that was too much time. He escaped the pass rush on a 75-yard drive and fired a 20-yard touchdown to Deuce Alexander in the final seconds of the half. It was 24-7 at the break.

"We walked into a storm," Kiffin said afterward. "Trinidad was on fire early."

This is the quarterback Kiffin recruited out of Division II and turned into a star. Now the guy he built was taking apart his new team.

LSU's 17-point answer

Credit LSU: it didn't fold. Ty Benefield's blitz forced a rushed Chambliss throw that Ja'Keem Jackson intercepted and returned to the Ole Miss 33. Sam Leavitt then ran 10 yards up the middle, got flipped upside down by a pile of tacklers, landed at the 4, and scored on the next snap. After Lucas Carneiro missed a 53-yard field goal wide right, Leavitt hit Winston Watkins Jr., an Ole Miss transfer, for a 26-yard touchdown. It was 24-21.

The bad luck kept coming for LSU, though. Star tight end Trey'Dez Green hurt his right knee on a catch in Ole Miss territory, and linebacker-safety Dashawn Spears had already gone down with a lower left leg injury. The Tigers stalled at the 2 and Scott Starzyk kicked a 23-yard field goal to tie it at 24 with 11:21 left. Kiffin said later he'd planned to go for it on fourth down until LSU lost a yard.

Ole Miss had problems of its own. Lacy left in the third quarter with a left shoulder injury, and Golding said afterward his X-rays were negative. That meant the Rebels' Heisman-caliber backfield was down to one man for the closing stretch.

The 14-yard run and Golding's gamble

That one man was enough. Chambliss led a 13-play, 75-yard drive that took 5:07 off the clock, then faked a handoff and ran 14 yards against the grain, beating Benefield to the left pylon. Ole Miss led 30-24 with 6:14 remaining.

Then Pete Golding made the call that decided the game. Most coaches kick there and take a seven-point lead. Golding had his offense stay on the field with a hard count, a plan Ole Miss had drilled all week. LSU jumped offside. Then it jumped again. From half a yard out, backup back JT Lindsey took a direct snap into the end zone against his former team. The lead was 32-24, so the worst LSU could do was force overtime.

"If we can't get a half yard to get it to eight (points), to make sure that you don't lose the game... then we shouldn't win the game," Golding said. Chambliss said he wasn't surprised at all: "We've been practicing that all week."

LSU still pushed. The Tigers went 69 yards in 14 plays to the Ole Miss 6. Leavitt missed an open Zach Grace at the goal line on third down. On fourth down, his pass hit Franklin's helmet and Braxton caught it. Leavitt finished with 153 passing yards, a touchdown and 63 rushing yards, and LSU fell to 2-1.

Kiffin, gratitude and "you're welcome"

The Kiffin press conference was always going to be must-watch, and he delivered it in two moods. First the jab: talking about the atmosphere, he said, "I guess I had to leave to get them to do that, so you're welcome." Then the surprise. He said the emotions on the bus ride in weren't what he expected. They were about gratitude for his six years in Oxford, and it was his first game like this without his father.

"I'm glad it's over. This was an emotional game for a lot of reasons," Kiffin said. "Sometimes I don't act like it, but I'm a human, too. Congrats to those guys. They played really well. They deserved to win."

He also named the exact scenario that beat him. His "biggest fear all week," he said, was the game ending with "Trinidad having the ball in his hands." That's exactly how it ended.

Chambliss, for his part, yelled "Hotty Toddy" with a curse word added at the end of a TV interview and later apologized for the language, though not the feeling. "This one meant a lot more than other games — the coaches that were here, now at LSU, some players as well," he said. Defensive tackle Will Echoles said he and several teammates went looking for their former coaches on the LSU sideline after the final whistle.

Oxford gets the last word, for now

Golding's own verdict was blunt: "You keep on playing with fire, you're going to get burned." He's right. Ole Miss let a 17-point lead disappear and needed a helmet deflection to finish it. But in a game this emotional, the coach who stayed in Oxford made the gutsiest call, and the quarterback Kiffin left behind made the biggest plays. Ole Miss is 3-0 and 1-0 in the SEC and has now beaten LSU in consecutive seasons.

For Kiffin, the homecoming is over, the villain role is set, and the schedule doesn't let up. Texas A&M comes to Death Valley next Saturday. He told reporters it already feels like LSU has played a full season's worth of emotion, with eight SEC games still to go. Ole Miss heads to Florida with its quarterback healthy and its revenge secured. And the Grove gets to remember that the night Kiffin came back, the program he left was better.