BATON ROUGE, La. — LSU let its second chance slip away.

Twice the Tigers were No. 1 and in control of their national championship hopes.

Twice the team with a flair for the dramatic couldn't pull out a triple-overtime victory against a Heisman Trophy contender.

Darren McFadden rushed for 206 yards and three touchdowns, and even threw for another score to lift Arkansas to a 50-48 victory yesterday, likely eliminating another team from the national title.

"Certainly, he had a Heisman performance today," LSU coach Les Miles lamented. "Right now, there's a goal of our football team taken off the board and it's sad. ... Tonight, we'll be sick."

LSU may very well play a bowl game in New Orleans, but the one they were hoping to play — the BCS championship game on Jan. 7 — now looks out of reach.

That had to devastate most of the 92,606 fans who filled Tiger Stadium with earsplitting roars throughout this classic, then quietly filed out while the Razorbacks stormed the field in triumph after snapping the nation's longest home-winning streak at 19 games.

The Tigers (10-2, 6-2 Southeastern Conference) had already clinched the SEC West Division and will move on to the conference title game in Atlanta on Dec. 1, but will do so feeling a little hollow.

Winning the SEC title will put LSU in the Sugar Bowl. No team with two losses has ever played in the national title game. A few more upsets could put LSU back in the debate, but it could've been so easy for the Tigers.

"It's a sick feeling, losing another tough game that we played our hearts out," tight end Richard Dickson said. "We can think about it for a while but we have to come out next week and win an SEC title."

McFadden's rushing touchdowns went for 16 yards in the second quarter, 73 yards in the third period and 9 yards in the second OT. His TD pass was a flawlessly executed 24-yarder over the middle to Peyton Hillis after McFadden froze the defense with a play-action fake.

Heisman voters will have to think twice about leaving McFadden off of the top of their ballot now.

"However you want to put it," McFadden said, "numbers speak for themselves."

Hillis scored four TDs, the last in the third overtime. Felix Jones ran for the critical 2-point conversion to make it 50-42 for the Razorbacks (8-4, 4-4).

LSU responded when Matt Flynn found Brandon LaFell for a 9-yard TD, but Matterral Richardson intercepted the 2-point conversion attempt, and Arkansas' bench emptied onto the field in triumph.

"Hey, we were the best team in the country today," boasted Houston Nutt, who is rumored to be on his way out as the Razorbacks' head coach. "To come down here in Baton Rouge and win is huge."

McFadden, last year's Heisman Trophy runner-up, now has 1,725 yards rushing this season, breaking the school's single-season record he set last year.

No doubt there are West Virginia and Ohio State fans who'd vote McFadden for Heisman if they could.

By knocking off LSU, which was in first place in the BCS standings, Arkansas boosted the national championship hopes of the Mountaineers and Buckeyes.

McFadden often took direct snaps in the "Wild Hog" formation, in which he was a triple threat to run, hand off or throw.

While he looked quite comfortable in the quarterback role, he was most dangerous running the ball, as usual. All of his rushing TDs came on direct snaps.

"We had been watching film of LSU and saw they had weaknesses against running quarterbacks," McFadden explained. "So it was something we planned on doing all week."

Miles said he thought he had a good plan for the "Wild Hog," with two defenders shadowing McFadden. LSU linebacker Ali Highsmith did his best, making 15 tackles.

"There's a point where I thought we were going to defend that thing pretty well," Miles said. "There were two pretty good LSU tacklers ready to tackle that guy and he didn't go down. It definitely affected us."

Maybe McFadden was running a little angrier than usual after hearing Miles purposely mispronounce Arkansas as ar-KANSAS in sound bytes this week.

"They weren't saying it right so we wanted to let them know how to say it," McFadden said.