What a welcome to the Fun Belt for Louisiana Tech.
The Bulldogs (3-2, 1-0) worked through miscues and missed opportunities and rallied back furiously in the final minutes of their Sun Belt opener to stun Louisiana (Lafayette) in the type of wild finish for which their new conference has often been known.
Louisiana Tech quickly strung together two touchdowns and three defensive stops to erase a 12-point deficit with less than four minutes remaining and slam the door on the Ragin’ Cajuns (4-2, 1-1) and a 32-31 victory.
“I told the kids before the game that there’s not many times that you get to write your own history,” coach Sonny Cumbie said. “This is the first season for us to play as a football program in the Sun Belt. There are seven more games ahead of us, so this is not a finished product and there’s a lot of things that we have to correct and get better at.
“I’m really proud of our players for how hard they played the first half. We did not play a very clean game or our best in terms smart, winning football. It was actually the opposite, and it continued into the second half. It was really hard for us to get out of our own way. We talked to our coaches on defense and offense on the headsets, saying we are going to find out in these next eight minutes what type of football team that we have.”
Fourth-year quarterback Blake Baker led a pair of eight-play drives of 60-plus yards to a 12-yard scoring run and then 7-yard touchdown to veteran tight end Eli Finley.
The defense forced back-to-back three-and-outs on which the Cajuns could manage only 7 yards and 2:32 of clock used to help keep comeback hopes alive, and third-year defensive back Jordan McCrae snatched an interception down the middle of the field to help close the contest.
Baker finished with season-high passing and rushing totals with 319 yards and three touchdowns on 32-for-42 efficiency and 35 yards on 11 runs.
Finley caught nine passes for 114 yards and a career-high two touchdowns, and fifth-year running back Andrew Burnette rushed 14 times for a season-high 85 yards.
Second-year receiver Jay Mickens caught nine passes for 92 yards and touchdown, and fifth-year receiver Talyn Shettron had season-highs of eight receptions for 102 yards.
Fourth-year defensive back Sam Fongang led the defense with a career-high nine tackles, and former Haynesville star Alonzo Jackson Jr. returned with seven tackles, including a sack, and a pass breakup and an early fumble after being ejected early last week for a targeting call.
Senior defensive back Kameron Carter had an interception.
“(Jackson) missed last week’s game for most of the game, so he was fresh and excited,” Cumbie said. “He is a playmaker. I think that, defensively, it wasn’t our best in the second half, and then we found ways to get stops and a takeaways to end the game. We rose up there at the end, and I’m really proud of Alonzo. He’s going to continue to just ascend and make plays. He’s a great Bulldog.”
The teams traded a pair of turnovers, each with one in the first half and another in the third quarter.
But while Louisiana Tech couldn’t convert its takeaways into points, the Cajuns’ were pivotal in opening up their lead.
A sack-fumble forced by junior edge rusher Lester Jones (Liberty Magnet) and recovered by sophomore defensive lineman Priest Ashe set up a short field and eventual 30-yard field goal by Tony Sterner for Louisiana’s first lead, 10-7.
And as the in-state foes continued to trade scores, another fumble forced and recovered by former Lafayette Christian star Fitzgerald West Jr. led to a 25-yard Trenton Chaney (Lutcher) run that pushed the advantage to 24-13.
Louisiana Tech pulled within 24-19 on a 3-yard run by Mickens early in the fourth quarter, but couldn’t complete the subsequent two-point attempt.
And the Ragin’ Cajuns appeared poised to put away a second victory in as many weeks to open Sun Belt play with a 45-yard touchdown from quarterback D’Wanye’ “Lunch” Winfield (Lutcher) to KeDarius Wade to extend the lead back to 31-19 and then a defensive stop midway through the quarter.
The room for error was all but gone for the Bulldogs, but they flipped the momentum on its head with a light-out finish.
“That the football team that we played, it’s a good football team,” Cumbie said. “They were 4-1, and they are well-coached. They have really good players and they had a great game plan, and coach (Michael) Desormeaux has done a phenomenal job in terms of building that program. It was a great team win, and I’m looking forward to putting this one to bed tonight, learning from the things that we have to correct and we will be even better next week because we’re going to have a team that’s coming off a bye week.”
Louisiana Tech makes the short trip to Monroe next Saturday to face ULM (0-5, 0-1) for the first time since 2000.
The Bulldogs won the past eight meetings on the field, beginning in 1988, before the one-time local rivalry went dormant in the new century.
Winfield finished 14-for-23 for 239 yards, a touchdown and two interceptions and 12 carries for 23 yards and another score.
Wade’s two catches for 88 yards and a touchdown led the receiving corps, and former Catholic-Baton Rouge star Shelton Sampson Jr. had his first two receptions of the season for 60 yards after being sidelined much of the season thus far by injury.
Redshirt freshman running back J.J. Garner and sophomore Steven Blanco (St. Martinville) carried seven and eight times, respectively, for 36 yards each, including a 20-yard touchdown run by Garner.
A slew of in-state products led the Cajuns’ defense, including senior Jake St. Andre (Haughton), junior linebacker Micah Johnson (Parkview Baptist) and senior defensive back Maurion Eleam (Neville) with 14, 10 and nine tackles, respectively, and sophomore defensive back Brent Gordon Jr. with seven tackles, two pass breakups and a quarterback hurry.
This article will be further updated…
