A crazy thing happened on the way to Louisiana Tech playing one of the worst games in Bulldog/Independence Bowl/recorded history.
The Bulldogs somehow got the one thing they had been missing all day – luck.
But to get it, they had to create it on their own, because the football gods sure weren’t going to help them out, based on what had happened already.
Mired in a game that had flag after flag after flag (there were 25 of them enforced) and punt after punt after punt (there were 17 of them), the Bulldogs managed to qualify for being more than a little bit unlucky. If there was a ball rolling around on the ground for all the world to see, the Bulldogs managed to not come up with it.
That included one crazy play in which FIVE Tech players touched a muffed punt that headed into the end zone (long snapper Ean Burch actually had two shots at it), turning what would have been an out-of-nowhere touchdown into an ordinary Coastal touchback.
Tough luck.
There was a fumble by Tech quarterback Trey Kukuk that should have been overturned by video review to an incomplete pass, but somehow wasn’t.
Bad break.
As poorly as Tech played for most of the game – “that’s as bad of a first half as we have played all year,” said Tech coach Sonny Cumbie – there was also a certain degree of unluckiness involved as well before the Bulldogs came away with a 23-14 win Tuesday at Independence Stadium.
So how do you stop being unlucky? You make your own luck.
And that’s what Tech defensive backs Amari Butler and Jordan McRae did.
There’s no doubt that the Bulldogs picked up the defensive intensity in the fourth quarter. The tackling had a lot more force to it. The secondary coverage, which had been exposed a time or two earlier, suddenly zipped it up.
“The team needed it,” Butler said. “Somebody needed to step up and I just saw an opportunity.”
It turned out to be a lot more than that.
With 11:50 to go in the game and Tech still in sleep-walk mode, Butler had a perfectly-timed hit on a Coastal Carolina receiver to break up the completion on what would have been a first down in Tech territory.
But that’s when luck tapped Tech on the shoulder pads.
Butler’s hit didn’t just force an incompletion. Instead, he popped the ball into the air and there was McRae to pluck it out of midair.
“I saw it coming all the way,” Butler said. “All I had to do was go make the play. I don’t even know where I hit him. But he felt it though. He felt it.”
“I just knew I had to catch it,” McRae said. “We came out kind of shaky, but we just needed to calm down and play the game. We went out there and did what we do. Definitely the biggest play of the game. It turned the game around.”
Whatever fog the Bulldogs had been in seemed to clear after that.
Tech took all of one play to score after that interception. It came on a 52-yard pass from Kukuk to Marlion Jackson for a touchdown. The Bulldogs missed the two-point conversion, but all of a sudden, they were back in the game, within 14-12.
Tech got a nice return after forcing a Chanticleer punt and was helped by an unnecessary roughness penalty. This time, it only took three plays to score as Andrew Burnette took it in to give Tech the lead.
After that, here’s a quick recitation of the final Coastal Carolina drives:
Three and out.
Three and out.
Four and out.
Game ending interception.
Nice job by the Tech defense, which overcame having five of its nine top tacklers think better of playing in the Independence Bowl.
If you are counting up the number of points Tech allowed in the second half, the answer would be zero.
Former Evangel kicker Kaegen Kent, who isn’t 5-foot-8 and isn’t 160 pounds, made his second field goal of the day (bringing his career total to two) and that was all she wrote.
The game had an eerie parallel to the Bulldogs’ season.
There was some unluckiness – Tech lost two games this year on the final play of the game – and seemed to be drifting along and going nowhere as the season wound down. But suddenly there was a big break – rallying from 21 points down and beating Liberty in overtime – and now the Bulldogs will ride off into the sunset of 2025 with an eight-win season.
“I think the game was an accumulation of a football team that has learned how to win,” Cumbie said. “I’m so proud of our team in how we ended it today.”
Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com