Bulldogs shock FIU late

Better late than never.

After trailing for three hours and 35 minutes of Saturday's season opener against FIU, Louisiana Tech true freshman, and makeshift running back, Jacob Fields sprinted into the end-zone from 30 yards out for the game-winning score to put the Bulldogs on top 22-17 with just over a minute to play.

Despite trailing by 14 after the first quarter and 17-13 at halftime, the Bulldogs kept nawing away at the Panthers and saw major second half improvement from its new-look defense and big-name quarterback transfer in Hank Bachmeier.

After a FIU field goal with 10:06 left in the second quarter Tech's defense went on attack mode and suffocated the opposition with an imrpoved pass rush and secondary play to the tune of seven, count-em, seven straight punts, before Cecil Singleton's game-clinching interception.

Through it all, Tech head coach Sonny Cumbie and his group are now 1-0 overall and 1-0 in Conference USA play. Two victories in one? Cumbie is proud his sqaud stay resolved and got the job done.

“I hope it grows their confidence,” Cumbie said postgame. "I think FIU showed some things early on that maybe they hadn’t shown last year – lining up in the wide splits and spreading everybody out and really isolating the zone insert and they took it to the house. After that, you take that rush out of it, I think from a rushing standpoint they probably didn’t have a lot of rushing yards after that.”

And for the first 15 minutes of Saturday’s season opener, Tech looked like a ghost from 3-9’s past.

Defensive lapses, miscommunication on offense and a quiet Joe Aillet Stadium made up the first quarter of Saturday’s action, with the Panthers ahead 14-0 after a Tech punt and interception. The Panthers were averaging 9.9 yards a play and had 103 rushing yards after three series and it looked like the preseason optimism had already faded after FIU scored three plays in on 75 yards in less a minute on its opening drive.

From there, Tech's defense settled in and got to work as it began its ramp up towards its string of punt enforcement.

Tech's offense was in a similar boat, with Bachmeier starting rusty and looking like someone who truly hadn't seen a live snap in close to a year. But despite being down its two top running backs Marquis Crosby and Tyre Shelton due to injury, and then suffering another setback to third-string back Charvis Thornton in the first quarter, Tech stayed close enough and eventually brought life into the stadium on a 64-yard touchdown from Bachmeier to Smoke Harris on a slant.

Harris, who's been around the program for six seasons, is familiar with nights like Saturday going a different direction - rarely in the win column for the Bulldogs. Tech came in 0-19 in its last 19 games when trailing at halftime.

But this season's already got a different vibe about it and Harris won't let past mistakes define what the 2023 Bulldogs are.

“Yeah, that’s fine. We don’t live in the past. We live in the present," Harris said. "So, we just go play by play, down by down, first down and move the chains and keep going game by game. We don’t care about what happened in the past. We just keep moving forward.”

Harris finished with 11 catches for 155 yards and 1 touchdown - one yard shy of tying his career high for single-game yardage.

While Tech managed the one touchdown through three quarters, the team was quietly starting to assert its dominance on the Panthers, out-gaining them 208-45 since the first quarter with 10 minutes left in the third. Bachmeier started to hit underneath routes with more confidence and moved around the pocket with focus as opposed to his first handful of plays.

Cumbie praised his quarterback postgame, who finished 34-44 with 333 yards, 1 touchdown, and 1 interception.

“Really gritty performance and I love watching how he competed,” Cumbie said of Bachmeier. “You complete 77% of your passes, it doesn’t surprise me because he’s extremely accurate and I think he’s only going to get better and better in this offense. He hasn’t played since September (2022). This is a completely different offense that he’s in going out against a completely different team. All those things take a minute to settle in. He made some big-time throws.”

Tech's offense got a boost from Bachmeier when they needed it, but it was the defense that came up time after time. And keep in mind, this unit had the fourth-fewest sacks in the country last season (16) and had the second worst run defense in the country (243 ypg). Yes, that unit, with the help of veteran and new playmakers, shut the Panthers down in the second half with a goose egg on the scoreboard.

Over the Panthers' five second-hald drives, they managed 73 total yards. Deshon Hall, Zion Nason, and J’Dan Burnett got to FIU quarterback Grayson James for the team's first sacks of the season while linebackers Brevin Randle and Jeslord Boateng came up big with tackles for loss in the final frame.

With 12:50 left to play, FIU had 22 plays go for 46 yards since its first quarter successes.

But for the longest, Tech couldn't seem to capitalize, as kicker Jacob Barnes missed two field goals within 50 yards, including a 43-yard attempt with 3:30 left to play.

And like all the other drives before, Tech's defense got FIU off the field in three plays and gave the offense one last shot to secure the win.

“I think our team didn’t flinch when that happened,” Cumbie said of Barnes’ missed field goal with 3:30 left. “Defensively, they came out and said let’s get a stop. There was no flinch. There was no let-down. There was no sucking the life out of a sideline in that moment. They did a great job getting the stop, getting the ball back."