For the second year in a row, Louisiana Tech travels to face an LSU team fresh off a huge season-opening win over Clemson.
That’s about all that’s the same this time around..
“That was a long time ago,” Bulldogs head coach Sonny Cumbie said. “There’s a lot that’s changed in one year. I think it’s a great opportunity…It’s going to be an incredible environment. It’ll be completely different in terms of the environment than it was last year, and so you have to reference that as a starting point.”
While the environment may, in fact, be different, the coaching staff on offense and personnel has changed.
LSU has eight new starters on offense and produced 44 offensive points against Clemson’s defense last week. Last season’s group only managed 17 in a win over Clemson and turned around the following week and only mustered 23 against Louisiana Tech.
“I think one of the things offensively is you can tell up front they’re more athletic on the offensive line,” Cumbie said. “The quarterback, (Garrett Nussmeier) was banged up last year when we played him. So, he wasn’t able to move as much as what he could have. But I think from that position this year, the elusiveness of (Sam) Leavitt is going to be a problem.”
LSU’s new signal caller ran for 113 yards and a pair of scores versus Clemson.
Tech returns the same two quarterbacks that played in Tiger Stadium last season. Trey Kukuk started the game and was replaced by Blake Baker. From there, Baker took the reins of Cumbie’s offense and led the Bulldogs to four wins in six games.
“Blake’s our starter, and he really solidified himself last year after the LSU game,” he said. “He really got on a run and played very well, tore his ACL against Delaware late in the season. Then Trey came in, and we won three games in a row at the end of last season with Trey really willing us to victory in some of those games…I think our team has a lot of confidence in both.”
Coming off an 80-6 win over Northwestern State, perhaps the weakest FCS team in college football, La. Tech is confident and well-rested with many of its starters coming out of the game early in the opener.
La. Tech has trips to LSU and Baylor before finishing the non-conference against Army which won seven games a year ago including one over Kansas State. The Black Knights blasted Bryant 59-3 last week.
“We’re definitely going to be challenged a lot more than what we were Saturday night,” Cumbie said. “We’ll find out a tremendous amount about our football team through these next three games.”
Editor’s Note: (Quotes in this story are based on Sonny Cumbie’s interview with Matt Moscona on After Further Review)
