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For at least the next couple of days, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette football team will pay attention to repairs.
What needs fixing?
Coaches call the problem mistakes and there were more than enough of those — both mental and physical — for the Ragin’ Cajuns on Saturday in a season-opening 45-3 loss to No. 8 LSU.
UL doesn’t have much time for routine maintenance.
The Cajuns face another tough opponent this Saturday when they travel to Texas A&M (1-0). In four visits to Kyle Field since 1990, they’ve been outscored 194-28.
How much will the LSU loss affect ULL’s preparation for Texas A&M?
ULL senior defensive tackle Marshall Delesdernier isn’t so sure.
“I guess it depends how we come back and practice,” he said. “It won’t hurt us so much if we see it as a good opportunity to fix our mistakes.
<center><p><a href="http://www.2theadvocate.com/sports/3817066.html?showAll=y&c=y" target="_blank">The rest of the story</a>
By BOB ARDOIN
Special To The Advocate
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“We’re a team that has a lot of players who have played in difficult places throughout our careers here, so it’s not like we haven’t been playing in front of large crowds,” he said.
Running back Tyrell Fenroy, who gained over a 1,000 yards as a freshman last season, managed only 52 against LSU.
Like Delesdernier, Fenroy said his team’s offensive problems were caused by a mixture of LSU’s defensive speed and the occasional confusion by the Cajuns once the ball was snapped.
When asked to grade the offense on its performance, Fenroy thought for a few seconds and said, “I’d give us about a C-minus.”
“I don’t think it was entirely a case of (LSU) shutting us down,” Fenroy said. “A lot of times the play was there, but the back ran the wrong hole, made the wrong cut, the lineman made the wrong block or the wrong assignments carried out.”
Fenroy said the Cajuns, who are picked to win the Sun Belt Conference title this season, haven’t lost any of their preseason confidence following the LSU loss.
“The thing is our problems (against LSU) aren’t that hard to correct,” Fenroy said. “They were mostly mistakes on our part. The confidence part is still there for us. We just have to get a lot better in the area of our execution.”
Delesdernier frequently used the word mistakes when describing the defensive problems the Cajuns encountered against the Tigers.
“Take away our mistakes and we didn’t play that badly,” he said. “From a defensive tackle’s standpoint, I don’t think we did as good a job as we needed with the pass rush.
“Our game plan defensively was to take away (LSU’s) rushing game,” he said. “We planned to bring people after their running backs by putting a lot of people in the box, taking away some of the creases and getting people out on the edges.
“Instead they did what we didn’t expect with the play action passes. We saw on film that a lot of their success with the play action came off the run.”
The game was the second time ULL defensive coordinator Brent Pry matched his plan against LSU offensive coordinator Jimbo Fisher.
In 2002, Fisher’s offense rang up 48 points against the Cajuns.
Leaving the playing field Saturday night, Pry had compliments for LSU’s offensive game plan.
Russell threw three touchdown passes against a ULL secondary that was vulnerable and sometimes confused while attempting to stalk LSU receivers while in single coverage.
“Give Jimbo a lot of credit for coming up with using things against us that they had not shown before” Pry said. “They let (LSU quarterback) JaMarcus Russell come to the line of scrimmage and check off. That was something they hadn’t done in the past.
“We came in defending the run, but that exposed us to the throwing game.”
Sophomore Drew Edmiston was the only one who put points on the board for the Cajuns when he kicked a 41-yard field goal with 11:26 remaining in the second quarter.
Edmiston missed a 35-yarder late in the first quarter, but he said he felt more confident attempting only the second field goal of his career.
“I tried to get rid of any pressure before the game when I came out the kick and heard all the people hollering at me,” he said. “On the first (field goal attempt) I was a little jittery, but my team helped me get through missing that one. They told me now that I had gotten the first one out of the way, I was going to make the second one.”
ULL offensive coordinator Rob Christophel said senior quarterback Jerry Babb probably didn’t have the best game of his career after passing for only 63 yards off 17 attempts, including two interceptions that led to touchdowns.
“(Babb) and I had a talk in the locker room after the game and he didn’t have that good of a game,” Christophel said. “But give LSU’s defense credit for making Jerry make some bad decisions.
“We had some mental mistakes that hurt us, but when you have that, it’s for us as coaches to look at some of those things and then figure out what went wrong.”
Series notes
ULL interim athletic director David Walker said before Saturday night’s game that LSU and ULL are currently scheduled to play again in 2010.
“The way it’s set right now, we come to play LSU for the season opener that year,” said Walker.
Walker said he has tried to get Tulane to play the Cajuns in football, but the Green Wave haven’t shown any interest in the matchup.
Story originally published in The Advocate
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