Things were looking good for UL’s chances of spoiling Louisiana Tech’s Sun Belt debut early in the fourth quarter.
Lunch Winfield connected with KeDarius Wade on a 46-yard touchdown pass for a 31-19 lead with 11:34 left to play.
At that point, UL coach Michael Desormeaux faced a dilemma. There were several ways for his Ragin’ Cajuns to hold on for the victory, but none of them would be easy to pull off.
As it was, the Cajuns had to get creative to run for the 160 yards they gained. Louisiana Tech’s aggressive defense made life tougher on Winfield than any defense so far, limiting him to 34 yards on 13 carries.
Running the ball without the perceived threat of the deep passing game wasn’t going to be easy.
The other option was to keep throwing the ball down the field and hoping for a big play.
“There’s a certain point in the game, you got to run the ball, and we weren’t able to do it consistently,” Desormeaux said. “We tried to get in some more open sets to do that. We weren’t able to get it done.
“I feel like we left a lot on the table in the run game. We missed some cuts, missed some reads and missed some of those things and that’s going to be really disappointing when we go back and watch it.”
Indeed, it’s the kind of loss that gnaws at you for weeks, months, even years.
“This one’s going to stay for a long time,” Desormeaux said. “You know, plenty of opportunities to finish the game and put it away and we didn’t get it done.”
Winfield’s precise passing was quite there in this one, finishing 14-of-24 passing for 239 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions.
“When we got a team down, we’ve got our foot on their neck,” Winfield said. “We’ve just got to stomp their necks. We’ve just got to finish. That’s the best thing — keep scoring. We keep scoring and they don’t win.”
The other method was the defense getting a turnover or a stop on either of Tech’s two drives. However, UL’s defense didn’t stop Baker’s passing game all night. He was 32-of-42 for 319 and three scores.
“I think there’s a lot of things we could do a lot better across the board,” Desormeaux said. “It starts with coaching. We’ve got to coach it better to be able to get them to execute the way we want to.”
It’s certainly tougher in the secondary after the loss of redshirt senior safety Collin Jacob last week.
“We’re not getting those things done right now,” Desormeaux added. “So we got to figure out a better way to coach it and to explain it and teach it and get them to do it.”
UL’s defense had no answer for tight end Eli Finley, who had nine catches for 114 yards and two scores. So the real big chance of the defense slamming the door on the win was a potential sack of Baker on fourth down, but Baker somehow escaped and went 12 yards for a touchdown to cut it to 31-26 with 3:44 left.
“We had a couple where we have the guy wrapped up and he made some great plays and got to give him a lot of credit,” Desormeaux said. “I thought we were in some really good calls on defense and had a chance to finish some drives and we weren’t able to finish on the quarterback.
“That’s like an old problem from a couple years ago that’s come back to bite us a little bit right now.
Then really, Tech’s final drive just looked inevitable. The defense looked spent and had no answers.
“These guys are freaking beat up … it mattered to them a whole lot,” Desormeaux said. “We just didn’t execute great at times when we had to.”
There were 46 seconds left after Tech’s game-winning touchdown and the Cajuns only trailed by one point.
Instead of a comeback, Winfield threw his second interception. That was more of a desperation pass, but three total turnovers continue a season-long trend of giving the ball away
“We turned the ball over too many times,” Desormeaux said. “We had a couple turnovers that were able to turn into points. One of them was just a field goal. But at the end of the day, you’ve got to, when you have momentum, you’ve got to capture it and you got to find a way to take their hope away.”
In many ways, the Cajuns played well enough to win the game to get to 5-1 overall and 2-0 in league play.
“Our kids are crushed … we all are,” Desormeaux said. “This is a huge game for us and we kind of let it slip. We can’t let them beat us twice. We’ve got to use it the right way.
“We’ve got to get back to work because if we want to try to make a run at this, you certainly can’t lose another division game. That we know, that’s a fact.”
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