<blockquote><p align=justify>
TROY, Ala. — There wasn’t much bowl talk going on around the University of Louisiana locker room Saturday night.
Even though the Ragin’ Cajuns can still reach bowl-eligibility in their final game of the season 10 days from now, there wasn’t a word said about the postseason.
That was a wise course of action, considering that they’d just absorbed a 48-3 beating from Sun Belt Conference rival Troy and looked less like a bowl team than at any point this season.
“We had a couple of chances in the red zone,” said Cajuns coach Rickey Bustle, whose 5-6 squad has now lost three in a row after a four-game win streak. “We didn’t get the job done a couple of times — that’s just not the way we play.”
The Cajuns offense, far and away the Sun Belt leader in third-down efficiency, was an anemic 1-for-12 against the Trojans.
UL entered the game ranked third nationally in rushing and was more than doubled up on the ground (391 yards to 183) by Troy.
<center><p><a href="http://www.2theadvocate.com/sports/34981969.html?showAll=y&c=y" target="_blank">The rest of the story</a>
By DAN MCDONALD
Special to The Advocate
<!--
Those running yards were a double-shock to the Cajuns’ system, with the Trojans serving up a course of the medicine that had been so effective for ULL one month ago.
Despite ULL’s national ranking with a 283.7 average rushing per game, the ground yardage has been harder to come by over the past four weeks. ULL rushed for 2,392 yards in the four games before that streak, but had managed only 844 yards in the four games leading up to Saturday.
Tyrell Fenroy, the nation’s leading active career rusher, was limited to 23 yards on 10 carries with no tote more than 6 yards Saturday.
“The defense controlled the game for us while we figured out what we needed on offense,” said Troy coach Larry Blakeney, whose team wrapped up no worse than a share of the Sun Belt title for the third straight year.
What the bowl-bound Trojans needed to do, apparently, was get away from convention. Troy’s spread offense had put the ball in the air 205 times in its last four games, 72 of those coming a week earlier in the 40-31 loss at LSU. Against the Cajuns, Troy quarterback Levi Brown threw the ball 16 times and accounted for 51 yards.
It wasn’t missed. Troy faced 11 third-and-long situations and kept it on the ground seven times, converting on five of those.
“I knew we were going to run the ball a lot, but not quite this much,” Brown said after the Trojans’ highest rush output in two years. “I’m really proud of the offensive line. They couldn’t stop the run, so why should we stop it.”
The only bright spot for the Cajuns was the 136-yard rushing effort of quarterback Michael Desormeaux, his highest total since a midseason knee injury, before he was pulled from the game mid-drive with four minutes left in the third quarter.
“We gave our effort, it just wasn’t enough,” Desormeaux said.
“Things happen — injuries, penalties. It was the same old story. We’d move it between the 20s and we’d self-destruct in the red zone.”
Desormeaux’s ground total was more than half of the Cajuns’ total offense, a season-low 255 yards. Even in the season opener, ULL’s 51-21 loss at Southern Miss, that was the worst loss this year before Saturday, the Cajuns managed 394 offensive yards.
“I thought our kids were excited and ready,” Bustle said. “Offensively, we didn’t get into any kind of rhythm.”
The Cajuns have an extended period to find that rhythm. ULL is off over the Thanksgiving weekend and plays its season finale the following Wednesday, Dec. 3, in a regionally televised (ESPN Plus) home game against Middle Tennessee.
A win in that game would still leave ULL with a 5-2 conference record, and a share of the Sun Belt crown if Troy loses its Dec. 6 finale against Arkansas State. It will also get ULL to the six wins necessary for bowl consideration, and indications are that all but a couple of bowl-eligible teams in the country will be in the postseason.
But Middle Tennessee (5-6, 3-3) will be after the same goal.
“We have to just come back and get us a plan together,” Bustle said. “Mostly, we just have to get back to playing football.”
-->
