The UL Ragin’ Cajuns were dominating the game midway through the second quarter with a 14-0 lead.

Then in a split second, the game changed. Redshirt freshman running back Darrell Smith suffered an injury on the first down play from UL’s own 21 on a play where the whistle never blew when it seemed appropriate.

Then the UAB defense was able to use that extra time to force a fumble that Chris Burge recovered and returned 13 yards for a touchdown.

“Yes, I felt like his momentum was stopped,” UL coach Michael Desormeaux said.

With that said, Desormeaux was quick to add perspective to his comment.

“I’ll give the officials this, they were consistent with the fact they let the play continue on (throughout the game),” he said. “That is what they did. I felt like there were some other instances where it wasn’t as well. It wasn’t just that play. That’s the way they did it.”

Like most coaches, though, Desormeaux wasn’t in the mood for a lot of excuses, because of how important ball security is.

“The ball’s the most important thing that we’re going to have, so it can’t come out,” Desormeaux said.  “I don’t care if we’re down. It doesn’t matter, and he was not down. They did rip it out.”

On the night, UL had three fumbles and lost two of them.

UL quarterback Lunch Winfield also experienced the extra late whistles, being forced to endure long scrums with no whistles.


”It definitely was (longer than usual),” Winfield said. “A couple of them, I was just in there and was like, ‘Are they going to blow the whistle?’ But you just have to protect the ball. That’s the thing.

“They trying to let them stay in the game, I guess, so just protect the ball in the hole, keep driving your feet and try to make a play.”

Special issues again

Against USC the previous weekend, there was a poor punt, a missed field goal and an 86-yard punt return for a touchdown by the Trojans after several missed tackles.

In Saturday’s 21-14 home win over UAB, the special teams encountered more stumbling blocks.

For starters, there was a critical penalty. With 4:37 left in the third quarter and UL’s offense beginning to struggle, Brent Gordon returned a 52-yard punt 53 yards to the UAB 10 – only to be erased by an illegal block in the back on the return.

Then the Blazers’ comeback attempt was accelerated by UAB’s Ty Mims returning a 42-yard UL punt 42 yards to the UL 13. Two plays later, backup quarterback Nathan Rogers scored on an 11-yard touchdown run to trim UL’s lead to 21-14 with 8:59 left to play.

“Things kind of got out of whack in the fourth quarter with the punt returns,” Desormeaux said. “You know, we have one that we take all the way back down there and get a block in the back. Then they have one that I don’t think we hit a great kick and we missed tackles again.

“So there’s going to be a lot of things to go back and look at and say, look, like this game is never even this close in the end if we do these things better.”

Unusual game

There were a lot of unexpected aspects of the Cajuns’ win Saturday.

It began with holding an offense that was averaging 230 rushing yards a game to 74 – although Desormeaux didn’t know what to make of it all.

“When they play somebody you don’t know and there’s no common ground, between who you’ve played before, it’s tough to know,” Desormeaux said. “I mean the way they were running the ball, they were knocking people off the ball and they were falling forward every time they were running the ball.

“I mean, they were creasing people. 
So yeah, I mean, it was definitely better than I thought. It’s just hard early because you don’t know what to expect.”

Penalties  were also an issue for both teams at times.

Coming into this matchup, UAB had committed 17 penalties to only two for its first two opponents – Illinois and ULM.

On Saturday, the Blazers were flagged nine more times for 89 yards, compared to seven for 50 yards for the Cajuns.

“We’ve got a lot of things we need to correct after this game,” Desormeaux said.