Preview: LA Tech vs. Sam Houston - latechsports.com

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RUSTON*- Louisiana Tech will look to bounce back from two straight losses as 0-7 (0-4 CUSA) Sam Houston visits Ruston for a Friday night Homecoming Halloween matchup at Origin Bank Field at Joe Aillet Stadium. The Bulldogs enter the game at 4-3 (2-2 CUSA). The game will air nationally on CBS Sports Network.

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Discuss it here.

[BioMajor2013]

Dawgs Rolling. 27-0 at the Half. Offense firing on all cylinders? Payback for getting beat by SHST last year? I'll take it. Don't collapse. HBTD

[Blue Dawg]

We have a nice lead 41-14 but doing our best to lose in the second half

[Blue Dawg]

Probably safe now.

Man, I thought being a Jech fan was hard, SHSU is a whole nother level this year

[champion110]

You know it is a great game when you only have to punt ONCE! We allowed a couple of big plays, but we were definitely on our game last night. Going to need that fire for the rest of the season......

[dawg80]

Good Lord! SHSU sucks worse than I thought they did. No wonder they are 0-8. Worst team in the nation. Still, they managed 300 yards rushing last night against our so-called vaunted defense. We had two turnovers, Baker's INT the worst of the two. Throwing into double coverage. He got lucky on the long one to Gandy, also throwing into coverage. We had a missed PAT too.

BTW, why doesn't Tech have that All-State net thing where they contribute to a school's scholarship fund. Many schools do it.

[DawgyNWindow]

I'll be the contrarion here.

Although our offense has been mostly ugly and the defense has been hot and cold, we are kinda having a decent season here. Kennesaw state appears to be a really good team, so that loss doesn't sting as bad as I would have thought, and the WKU game could have gone either way. S Miss is having a great season, so that's a quality win, and Sam Houston played most of our conference mates much closer than they played us.

Not great, but something to build on. Better than the last 5 or 6 years.

[Blue Dawg]

I'll be the contrarion here.

Although our offense has been mostly ugly and the defense has been hot and cold, we are kinda having a decent season here. Kennesaw state appears to be a really good team, so that loss doesn't sting as bad as I would have thought, and the WKU game could have gone either way. S Miss is having a great season, so that's a quality win, and Sam Houston played most of our conference mates much closer than they played us.

Not great, but something to build on. Better than the last 5 or 6 years.

I think it is a decent season on paper. Most people will look at a 5-3 record and think it's fine, middle of the pack. And if they believe that, I will not disillusion them.

It's difficult to actually watch the games and come away with the same impression. If we look at SP+ (updated 10/26), we are #76, our losses are mostly to teams below us: #82 KSU, #88 WKU. Our best win is #72 USM. Everyone else is 100+. ESPN gives us a #105 strength of schedule, so the average top 5 team would be expected to go 11-1 with our schedule.

Going by Elo (which I still maintain but haven't posted on in a while) we will probably not end the year with any wins over a team in the Top 100. 5-7 is, in my opinion, unacceptable with this schedule.

lsu was close, I wonder if in another life we could have pulled that off, but just looking at KSU and WKU, both were lost by bonehead calls and play that we have become accustomed to. Beating up the worst team in the nation still does not inspire confidence that those mistakes will be corrected if our schedule were to get harder, as I think we all desire.

[PawDawg]

I think it is a decent season on paper. Most people will look at a 5-3 record and think it's fine, middle of the pack. And if they believe that, I will not disillusion them.

It's difficult to actually watch the games and come away with the same impression. If we look at SP+ (updated 10/26), we are #76, our losses are mostly to teams below us: #82 KSU, #88 WKU. Our best win is #72 USM. Everyone else is 100+. ESPN gives us a #105 strength of schedule, so the average top 5 team would be expected to go 11-1 with our schedule.

Going by Elo (which I still maintain but haven't posted on in a while) we will probably not end the year with any wins over a team in the Top 100. 5-7 is, in my opinion, unacceptable with this schedule.

lsu was close, I wonder if in another life we could have pulled that off, but just looking at KSU and WKU, both were lost by bonehead calls and play that we have become accustomed to. Beating up the worst team in the nation still does not inspire confidence that those mistakes will be corrected if our schedule were to get harder, as I think we all desire.

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This is good information and the same type information many of us knew of when Holtz was on his streak of bowl games. With Holtz, it wasn't about how many we were winning, but the ones we were losing and how we were losing them. That list is much longer than the list of "great wins". The whole time we were on the Holtz streak we had a President and AD who were spitting in the face of long time Tech fans (season ticket holders) by taking away tailgating traditions and touting the greatness of Judy and her mid-week TV deals.

[Dawgonit]

I think it is a decent season on paper. Most people will look at a 5-3 record and think it's fine, middle of the pack. And if they believe that, I will not disillusion them.

It's difficult to actually watch the games and come away with the same impression. If we look at SP+ (updated 10/26), we are #76, our losses are mostly to teams below us: #82 KSU, #88 WKU. Our best win is #72 USM. Everyone else is 100+. ESPN gives us a #105 strength of schedule, so the average top 5 team would be expected to go 11-1 with our schedule.

Going by Elo (which I still maintain but haven't posted on in a while) we will probably not end the year with any wins over a team in the Top 100. 5-7 is, in my opinion, unacceptable with this schedule.

lsu was close, I wonder if in another life we could have pulled that off, but just looking at KSU and WKU, both were lost by bonehead calls and play that we have become accustomed to. Beating up the worst team in the nation still does not inspire confidence that those mistakes will be corrected if our schedule were to get harder, as I think we all desire.

These are good examples of what I tried explaining on the CUSA board about this season's improvement for Cumbie. Without playing for a conference championship and winning a bowl game, I don't think this season is remarkable at all and I don't think it warrants much praise for Cumbie. After 4 years, the best we can do is average or above-average in the weakest conference with a highly disappointing offense. We play ULL and ULM next year possibly, do we feel confident playing against them right now?

[dawg80]

Both UL-Xs are 3-6 right now. But, no, I have no confidence that we would beat either of them, not with Crummy at the helm.

[Blue Dawg]

These are good examples of what I tried explaining on the CUSA board about this season's improvement for Cumbie. Without playing for a conference championship and winning a bowl game, I don't think this season is remarkable at all and I don't think it warrants much praise for Cumbie. After 4 years, the best we can do is average or above-average in the weakest conference with a highly disappointing offense. We play ULL and ULM next year possibly, do we feel confident playing against them right now?

On paper? Yes.

In reality? I think it highly likely we lose to ulm just because. Can you imagine the atmosphere in Monroe afterwards? They might pass out from the blood rush. For that reason alone I do not think it possible for Cumbie to win that game.

[HogDawg]

I think it is a decent season on paper. Most people will look at a 5-3 record and think it's fine, middle of the pack. And if they believe that, I will not disillusion them.

It's difficult to actually watch the games and come away with the same impression. If we look at SP+ (updated 10/26), we are #76, our losses are mostly to teams below us: #82 KSU, #88 WKU. Our best win is #72 USM. Everyone else is 100+. ESPN gives us a #105 strength of schedule, so the average top 5 team would be expected to go 11-1 with our schedule.

Going by Elo (which I still maintain but haven't posted on in a while) we will probably not end the year with any wins over a team in the Top 100. 5-7 is, in my opinion, unacceptable with this schedule.

lsu was close, I wonder if in another life we could have pulled that off, but just looking at KSU and WKU, both were lost by bonehead calls and play that we have become accustomed to. Beating up the worst team in the nation still does not inspire confidence that those mistakes will be corrected if our schedule were to get harder, as I think we all desire.

Immediately after the LSU loss, I posted that the LSU game was a ""lost opportunity" for LA Tech this year, but nobody seemed to believe me. But as we now see, it's indeed true. LSU is pathetic this year, and the Tech OFFENSE should have played much better against LSU than it did. That damn offense has been holding Tech back all season.

[Blue Dawg]

Immediately after the LSU loss, I posted that the LSU game was a ""lost opportunity" for LA Tech this year, but nobody seemed to believe me. But as we now see, it's indeed true. LSU is pathetic this year, and the Tech OFFENSE should have played much better against LSU than it did. That damn offense has been holding Tech back all season.

I certainly thought so at the time. It has been interesting this year when I'm chatting with lsu fans (essentially everyone I know) they all assume Tech has had a great season - they don't keep up with us of course (even though many are alumni...) so all they know is "Tech played well against lsu but came up short."

[DallasDog]

Offense has held us back the entire time Cumby has been here.