For the UL Ragin’ Cajuns, it’s a matter of reshuffling the focus after Saturday’s 35-31 road loss to Southern Miss.
Barring some really unforeseen circumstances, the Sun Belt championship game talk is out the window.
UL coach Michael Desormeaux now is focused on getting healthier during the open date and trying to post three or four wins over the final four-game stretch.
“Obviously, it’s very disappointing to come off a loss like that,” he said. “Two of the last three weeks you had an opportunity to finish games in the fourth quarter and we didn’t do that.
“Now we need to regroup and refocus and focus on what’s in front of us.”
The resting up part will be critical for the Cajuns (5-3, 2-2), who will host South Alabama on Nov. 7 before playing at UL-Monroe five days late on a Thursday.
“We’ve got an opportunity to work on ourselves a little bit this week, get back to the details and the fundamentals that help you win games when you need to,” said Desormeaux, who said the Cajuns will practice Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week. “Certainly, you know, everybody from top down has to do a little soul searching at what we can do a little bit better to help our team win some of these close games because the reality is we’ve got a lot in front of us.”
UL has a manageable closing stretch, which also includes a home game against Coastal Carolina and road trip to Georgia State. If the Cajuns can improve on closing out close games and win all four, they will head to a bowl game with a chance for a 10-win season.
To achieve those goals, a few things will need to happen.
For starters, the Cajuns have to get back to playing harder than the opponent.
“I’ve got to make sure my messaging is right to get them in the right frame of mind to go out there and go play really well,” Desormeaux said. “I’ve got to be what they need during the week so that on Saturday we get, you know, the results that we want.
“For the first time in eight weeks, I felt like we got outhustled, and physically, I didn’t feel like we won the line of scrimmage on either side. I mean, I know we didn’t.”
The second thing is the defense can’t allow Saturday’s game to become a blueprint on how to handle the unit. The Cajuns must get back to stopping the run.
Desormeaux said Southern Miss went back to running plays that had plagued the Cajuns in recent years, but UL seemingly had conquered those demons this season.
The result was the Golden Eagles rushing for 286 yards and four touchdowns.
“The thing that was probably the most disappointing on that end of it was that had given us trouble last year and the year before, and we, we like went over a bunch of things and how to fix it,” Desormeaux said. “We went through it, thought we had it figured, and truthfully through the first seven games this year, it really hasn’t been a glaring issue.”
It certainly was in Saturday’s loss. So much so that on the game-winning drive, Southern Miss ran the ball right at UL and didn’t have to throw a pass.
“It was just not really well executed,” Desormeaux said. “It didn’t matter if we were in man, if we were in pressure, if we were playing coverage … it was a different problem here and there all the way through it. In general, though, we didn’t win the line of scrimmage. We didn’t knock the line of scrimmage backwards. We didn’t create negative plays, which we’ve done so well.
“The overall big overarching theme there on the run is we did not control the line of scrimmage at all, which the week before we did an elite job of.”
The other need is figuring out a way to remain efficient on offense when the running game is neutralized and the opposing defense is daring quarterback Lunch Winfield to beat it in the pocket.
The Cajuns did that in many instances with Winfield passing for a career-high 299 yards and two touchdowns, but they came inefficiently on 22-of-41 passing with three sacks.
Desormeaux still went back to the line of scrimmage.
“Just like we talked about the D-line, not on offense, we didn’t get knock back,” Desormeaux said. “I think we settled for ties, you know, we settled for that position and just kind of sitting there and didn’t win the tear off.
“And when you do that, it doesn’t matter who’s running it. You’re not going to have a lot of success.”
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