by Malcolm Butler
Tonight at Joe Aillet Stadium, college football fans in north Louisiana will see the debut of the 2024 Louisiana Tech Bulldogs and Nicholls State Colonels.
Kickoff is set for 7 p.m.
Those same fans will also see the debut of Tech’s new video scoreboard complete with its state-of-the-art sound system.
It’s sure to be an entertaining night at The Joe.
Tech head coach Sonny Cumbie said he knows his Bulldogs are looking forward to kicking off the college football season.
“There is a lot of excitement,” said Cumbie. “Always with your first game there is excitement, but particularly with this group. We all sense, and we all feel that we have a lot to prove and to show who we are and what we have become as a football team.
“I think there will be a lot of energy. It’s just about playing with a high level of focus on what your job is and what your assignment is. Our guys are ready to go.”
The contest can be heard on the LA Tech Sports Network flagship station 107.5 FM with Malcolm Butler, Teddy Allen and Jerry Byrd providing the call of the game. Pregame begins at 5:30 p.m.
The two programs are coming off bipolar seasons with the Bulldogs posting a 3-9 mark last year while the Colonels won the Southland Conference title and earned a trip to the FCS playoffs.
“They are a really good football team that return a lot of players on offense and defense and special teams from a team that went to the FCS playoffs last year,” said Cumbie of the Colonels who return 19 starters.
Tech leads the all-time series 4-0 including a 48-13 win in the last meeting in 2009. In order for the Bulldogs to keep the unblemished mark against their south Louisiana foes intact, they will need to get production from some experienced newcomers.
The Bulldogs lost three of their top wide receivers from last year’s team with the graduation of Smoke Harris and the departure of Cyrus Allen to Texas A&M and Kyle Maxwell to Washington State. Despite these losses, Cumbie believes the Bulldogs will be fine at wide receiver.
“It’s really important to try to replace experienced players with experienced players when you can,” said Cumbie. “In this day and age of the transfer portal, that’s one of the things about it. We lost some guys who had played a lot of snaps, but we were able to also get some from the portal who have played a lot of football.
“We found a Jimmy Holiday from Western Kentucky. He was actually a guy I recruited out of high school when he went to Tennessee before going to Western Kentucky. He played a significant amount of football and made a lot of plays against us last year. He adds an element of top end speed which we lacked when Cyrus (Allen) left.
“Jay Wilkerson had to sit out last year in terms of transferring. No. 47. He is a guy that I think everyone is going to love watching him play. I think people will very quickly be asking who is going to be the next Jay Wilkerson because he is that type of football player. He loves the game.”
Red-shirt junior Jack Turner will get the start under center for the Bulldogs. Turner completed 84-of-148 passes for five TDs and five interceptions while seeing action in eight games last year.
The Bulldogs should get a boost in the running game this year with the return of a healthy Marquis Crosby. Tech’s leading rusher in 2022 managed just one carry in all of 2023, but is fully healthy heading into tonight’s opener.
Defensively, the Bulldogs hope for better days this year. The past two years, Tech has ranked among the bottom in numerous statistical categories which led to a change at the DC position during the off-season.
Enter new defensive coordinator Jeremiah Johnson, someone that Cumbie was familiar with and confident in from watching his teams over the past years.
“The league that Jeremiah coached in for a long time at Northern Iowa was a good one,” said Cumbie. “I was familiar with him because every year at TCU we would play Iowa State and Iowa State would play Northern Iowa almost ever year and a number of times beat Iowa State. So, I had an awareness of the type of program they had.
“I would start watching film and see what they did on defense and how multiple they were. They were really good against the run. They played in a conference that had North Dakota State and South Dakota State and some really good football teams in that conference, and they knew how to stop the run. And that’s something we needed.”
Tech lost its top four tacklers from a season ago, but does return some impact players including linebacker Zach Zimos, safety Michael Richard and cornerback Demarcus Griffin Taylor.
Gates to Joe Aillet Stadium will open at 5:30 p.m.
