** McNeese at LU Game Thread **

Just to be clearly hospitable there is no shuttle from any mall to the game.Now go Big Red!!!!!!

Aw hell, it's mcneese! I was being hospitable ....

I coulda sent em to the white buses that run to Cheniere LNG

Excited to see Kade vs the McNeese rush D.

I have been waiting to see Kade in person. That guy is just unreal, and has a year left to go! MSU fans are hoping he will leave early for the NFL draft, LOL.

well...let's see

-the offense and play calling sucked...grow a pair, Chuckster

-the officiating was so one sided it was unreal

-kudos to McNeese fans..they showed up in force. dang near a home game for them. hope we didn't have any recruits there that were undecided between LU or Mcneese

-LU fans are pussies

well...let's see

-the offense and play calling sucked...grow a pair, Chuckster

-the officiating was so one sided it was unreal

-kudos to McNeese fans..they showed up in force. dang near a home game for them. hope we didn't have any recruits there that were undecided between LU or Mcneese

-LU fans are pussies

The play calling on our end sucked, so ditto.

That had to bet the worst, most one sided officiated game I have seen in a long time...maybe ever! I don't know if it would have mattered because their defense is awesome. Their qb can't throw worth a damn but it didn't matter, just throw it up...the refs will bail you out with a damn pass interference call, what A FRIGGING JOKE.

After watching Kade and our running game all year, no way no how did I think anyone would be able to totally shut him down but they did so kudos to their coaches and their defense, very impressive. Our pathetic passing game finally caught up with us. Dear Devonn Brown, as a wide receiver the object is to catch the ball.

McNeese fans...awesome!! Cardinal fans and southeast Texans in general need to take notes from them!!! Take off ur damn high school letter jackets, and ur wannabe Aggie t-shirts and root for your school!!! For all the boring a$$ fans that do show up, it's called cheering, make some damn noise, it's ok to yell and have fun...it's NOT THE FRIGGING LIBRARY!!!

mcneese's lines owned ours.

Overall, our defense played well but gave up too many freaking third down conversions. And our tackling, at times, was awful

Did I say kudos to McNeese fans??!! Love having y'all here. Love getting pissed off at y'all's obnoxious cheering! REALLY wanted to send yall home with an L!!

oh, can we PLEASE recruit a punter, PLEASE!!!!!!!

What a night!

Crazy Game – No offense to the Lamar, but there was almost complete domination by McNeese, everywhere but the scoreboard. I don’t have any stats at hand, but it seems McNeese controlled the time of possession something like 70% of the time. Lamar’s Harrington was just stuffed at the line of scrimmage almost every time. Wow. That had to be his lowest production of the year. McNeese shot themselves in the foot in the red zone way, way too much! GOT to fix that for the playoffs or else!

Fans – Cowboy nation showed up in force! LU fans took the night off, apparently. It was kind of surreal seeing a loud and proud blue side and a somewhat empty home side at kickoff. In the second half, the home side was all but deserted. It felt like a home game for the Cowboys. Ticket wise, I don’t think it was a wise decision for Lamar to limit MSU to just 800 tickets. I hear 2000 was requested and then denied. I understand the concept of trying to maintain a home field advantage, but dang, Lamar ended up costing themselves some money, IMO. Every seat filled is cash for Lamar.

10-0, SLC Champions! – McNeese fans felt slighted when the Southland officials delayed the trophy presentation last week, but now we have it in hand, undisputed. What a celebration! I moved down to the first row after the game to get some close up pics, and the McNeese players came over to hoist the trophy and celebrate with the fans. I even got to fist bump McNeese QB Daniel Sams. I know the MSU players appreciated the road support.

McNeese now can get well deserved rest in the bye week, and get ready for the second round playoff game on Dec. 5. GEAUX POKES!

No way around it that McNeese dominated and turnovers kept it close...1 on a punt return where McNeese would have been set up with great field position and 2 at the goal line going in...gave up 406 yards rushing and 100+ to 3 different guys...

As far as Kade, last night's 17 carries for 70 yards was his 3rd lowest output on the year...he had 48 yards on 8 carries (in only about a quarter and a half of play) against Bacone, then 56 yards on 16 carries against Baylor. You could tell that McNeese committed to not having Kade beat them. Instead they forced Lamar to go through the air and once again we showed we couldn't win that way. I'm convinced that Earp's shoulder is still not right. Since coming back from that "bruised shoulder" he suffered against SELA they have only let him attempt 10 passes in the final 4 games in limited action overall...

Couple of positives

-Langley stays in the same area code as their wide receivers. Unlike most of our db. What genius had him at wr for half of the season?

- had , at times, 3 freshmen playing on defense. Good to see.

-mcneese's passing game sucks more than ours.

-no more having to watch Ronnie Jones air tackle and mouth off....just shut up

- I almost caught one of Carranco's punts ......row 20

Obviously this is not the season result I predicted back in August but it's not too far off from a lot of predictions at that time. The way we got to the 5-6 record we ended up with is even more surprising. After beating SAM and giving Baylor a run for their money for 3 quarters and nearly beating SELA we lost games to the bottom feeders of the conference. But wait a minute. SELA, as it turns out wasn't all that either as they finished 3-6 in conference and 4-7 overall. In hindsight, Lamar should have beaten SELA as well as Northwestern State, Nicholls and Abilene Christian. Every one of these teams finished below us in conference. Our biggest Achilles heel was our defense IMO. At first the LU D couldn't stop anyone's passing game. NWSU was oh-fer on the season until they unleashed their passing game on us. But, after giving up huge amounts of acreage via the air LU made adjustments to shore up the passing game and as a result started giving up thousands of yards in the run game, most of it straight up the gut. The worry, as I recall, was the offense with two unproven QBs at the helm but it was the defense that let us down more than anything else.

I'm not forgetting that we lost two games because of missed field goal and our punter left something to be desired but the main issue was the D. Hopefully Coach Ray will address this in the off season and it's my hope it will be by bringing in a new DC to run things. Coaching matters and evidently the D wasn't coached very well. I do not doubt that there are folks on this site who want to fire the whole coaching staff. I'm not sure that's the best thing but it's obvious some changes need to be made.

I am proud of the Cardinal football team. They gave great effort and never quit and that needs to be mentioned. I truly believe every player on the roster gave their best this season they deserve to be applauded for that. I fully expect 2016 to be even better with us competing for a conference championship. All we can do now is congratulate McNeese and root for them as they move into the playoffs.

Obviously this is not the season result I predicted back in August but it's not too far off from a lot of predictions at that time. The way we got to the 5-6 record we ended up with is even more surprising. After beating SAM and giving Baylor a run for their money for 3 quarters and nearly beating SELA we lost games to the bottom feeders of the conference. But wait a minute. SELA, as it turns out wasn't all that either as they finished 3-6 in conference and 4-7 overall. In hindsight, Lamar should have beaten SELA as well as Northwestern State, Nicholls and Abilene Christian. Every one of these teams finished below us in conference. Our biggest Achilles heel was our defense IMO. At first the LU D couldn't stop anyone's passing game. NWSU was oh-fer on the season until they unleashed their passing game on us. But, after giving up huge amounts of acreage via the air LU made adjustments to shore up the passing game and as a result started giving up thousands of yards in the run game, most of it straight up the gut. The worry, as I recall, was the offense with two unproven QBs at the helm but it was the defense that let us down more than anything else.

I'm not forgetting that we lost two games because of missed field goal and our punter left something to be desired but the main issue was the D. Hopefully Coach Ray will address this in the off season and it's my hope it will be by bringing in a new DC to run things. Coaching matters and evidently the D wasn't coached very well. I do not doubt that there are folks on this site who want to fire the whole coaching staff. I'm not sure that's the best thing but it's obvious some changes need to be made.

I am proud of the Cardinal football team. They gave great effort and never quit and that needs to be mentioned. I truly believe every player on the roster gave their best this season they deserve to be applauded for that. I fully expect 2016 to be even better with us competing for a conference championship. All we can do now is congratulate McNeese and root for them as they move into the playoffs.

I really don't get why our run defense sucked so bad. Maybe Tebo is not as good as I thought he was. I don't understand the decision to not play Earp more unless he was really hurt. Minden never proved that he deserved to be the guy. Of course, as good as Kade is we didn't really need good QB play too much. We have a lot of needs to fill. Defensively at all positions. QB. A couple of offensive linemen. Basically a whole new receiving corps but mainly Begleton. A punter. One bit of good news, we do have the best running back in the conference and possibly the best in the FCS country coming back. This is definitely a season of what could have been. When you have the kind of running game we had going 5-6 is really pathetic.

As far as coaching changes, my guess is there will be none. Mr. discipline (Woodard, courtesy of Dauphine's money) will be back, Mr creative (insert sarcasm), langston, will be back and I would imagine the defensive coordinator who replaced McGallion will be back. We do have some good young athletes and what appears to be a good recruiting class coming back. Hopefully these athletes can turn into good football players.

What a night!

 

Crazy Game – No offense to the Lamar, but there was almost complete domination by McNeese, everywhere but the scoreboard. I don’t have any stats at hand, but it seems McNeese controlled the time of possession something like 70% of the time. Lamar’s Harrington was just stuffed at the line of scrimmage almost every time. Wow. That had to be his lowest production of the year. McNeese shot themselves in the foot in the red zone way, way too much! GOT to fix that for the playoffs or else!

 

Fans – Cowboy nation showed up in force! LU fans took the night off, apparently. It was kind of surreal seeing a loud and proud blue side and a somewhat empty home side at kickoff. In the second half, the home side was all but deserted. It felt like a home game for the Cowboys. Ticket wise, I don’t think it was a wise decision for Lamar to limit MSU to just 800 tickets. I hear 2000 was requested and then denied. I understand the concept of trying to maintain a home field advantage, but dang, Lamar ended up costing themselves some money, IMO. Every seat filled is cash for Lamar.

 

10-0, SLC Champions! – McNeese fans felt slighted when the Southland officials delayed the trophy presentation last week, but now we have it in hand, undisputed. What a celebration! I moved down to the first row after the game to get some close up pics, and the McNeese players came over to hoist the trophy and celebrate with the fans. I even got to fist bump McNeese QB Daniel Sams. I know the MSU players appreciated the road support.

 

McNeese now can get well deserved rest in the bye week, and get ready for the second round playoff game on Dec. 5. GEAUX POKES!

Like I said before, awesome turnout from your fans. I'm jealous and embarrassed by our poor turnout, and the ones who did show seemed to be asleep. I think next time we play yall here you may as well wear home jerseys and we should wear road jerseys and paint the stadium and field blue and gold.

Good luck in the playoffs, I'll be pulling for yall. Your defense should keep you in games, but your passing game...yuck. Hopefully yall we get pass interference calls on every other pass like yall did us.

And you are also right about time of possession. Yall did a great job on Kade, holding him to 70 yards but, damn, i think 70% is a low estimate...it felt like yall had the ball 90% of the time...good lord.

Anyway, good luck to yall.

I really don't get why our run defense sucked so bad. Maybe Tebo is not as good as I thought he was. I don't understand the decision to not play Earp more unless he was really hurt. Minden never proved that he deserved to be the guy. Of course, as good as Kade is we didn't really need good QB play too much. We have a lot of needs to fill. Defensively at all positions. QB. A couple of offensive linemen. Basically a whole new receiving corps but mainly Begleton. A punter. One bit of good news, we do have the best running back in the conference and possibly the best in the FCS country coming back. This is definitely a season of what could have been. When you have the kind of running game we had going 5-6 is really pathetic.

 

As far as coaching changes, my guess is there will be none. Mr. discipline (Woodard, courtesy of Dauphine's money) will be back, Mr creative (insert sarcasm), langston, will be back and I would imagine the defensive coordinator who replaced McGallion will be back. We do have some good young athletes and what appears to be a good recruiting class coming back. Hopefully these athletes can turn into good football players.

I think individually the D-line are probably as good as you thought they were, maybe they could be a little bigger, stronger or quicker, but the I think the biggest problem is a lack of depth. As I live about 700 miles from Bmt now, I watch the games on my computer and listen via KLVI either on the computer or my cell phone. That said to point out that I saw that the freshman DL "the Army vet" was not dressed out last night as the ESPN3 announcers told his story and showed him on the sideline. Tebo was out for the SELA game if I remember correctly. D-Line maybe more than any other position on the field needs a rotation where they can stay at full speed on every play and when somebody is missing they get worn down.

I was at the game. My old roommates and I pick a game a year and get together. I think the weather kept some people away. McNeese brought a lot of fans, but you would expect that from a team that is undefeated. If Lamar was 10-0 going into that game, you would have seen a lot of fans in the stands.

I will start of with that Lamar should not have been in this game. Both the offensive and defensives lines for McNeese dominated the game. I was surprised that it was only 20-7 in the fourth quarter to be honest. If it wasn't for the turnovers, it would have been more like 35-7 at that point. Still, turnovers are part of the game. I looked at my roommate and said, "We are one crazy play away from being in this game." Not long after we had the long TD pass. I was disappointed to see so many fans leave at halftime, but at the time, it looked like McNeese was going to dominate the game.

Now, the officiating was terrible. I cannot believe how many pass interference calls McNeese got that were questionable at best. Then, there was an obvious PI in the endzone where the Lamar receiver was cleary interfered with that wasn't called. There was a feeling of the Southland Conference wanted an undefeated team. I am not bringing this up to say that if only--then Lamar would have won. I bring this up because the Southland Conference officiating can be and has been terrible. Something needs to be done. High school officating is better and has been for a very long time.

For all the boring a$$ fans that do show up, it's called cheering, make some damn noise, it's ok to yell and have fun...it's NOT THE FRIGGING LIBRARY!!!

There's a few things in play here that keeps our fans from being as loud as others. As I've mentioned before, LU police stifle our student section every game. This includes telling them to sit down so other students sitting behind them can see. The other thing is we lack tradition. With the exception of the kickoff there's no organized chanting or anything throughout the game. For example the bells at mcneese are intimidating. I think back to the tx state game where each side of the stadium echoed each other. We need some sort of tradition and organization. That's needed across all lamar sports.

Good luck in the playoffs, I'll be pulling for yall. Your defense should keep you in games, but your passing game...yuck. Hopefully yall we get pass interference calls on every other pass like yall did us.

 

And you are also right about time of possession. Yall did a great job on Kade, holding him to 70 yards but, damn, i think 70% is a low estimate...it felt like yall had the ball 90% of the time...good lord.

Thanks. You are right about the passing game. Sams liability is indeed his passing accuracy. Our receivers are pretty good, but I know its hard to tell. With Sams, he makes up for it with great escape ability and open field running. He had 100+ rushing yards for the night.

Regarding the calls, I think you have a valid point, but MSU fans were really ticked about the called fumble & return for a TD. Granted, I did not have a great view of it, but the reaction by everyone on the field, with the exception of two Cardinal players, makes us believe he was down and the play was over. In any case, McNeese has to take better care of the ball in the playoffs. Leave NOTHING to the officials!

Thanks. You are right about the passing game. Sams liability is indeed his passing accuracy. Our receivers are pretty good, but I know its hard to tell. With Sams, he makes up for it with great escape ability and open field running. He had 100+ rushing yards for the night.

 

Regarding the calls, I think you have a valid point, but MSU fans were really ticked about the called fumble & return for a TD. Granted, I did not have a great view of it, but the reaction by everyone on the field, with the exception of two Cardinal players, makes us believe he was down and the play was over. In any case, McNeese has to take better care of the ball in the playoffs. Leave NOTHING to the officials!

Think McNeese fans have a pretty good beef with the that fumble...watching it live I looked away because I though the play was dead only to see our guy running down the field...after watching the replay from the Lamar Video YouTube page you don't get a clear shot at it...definitely not enough to overturn the call on the field. You just see a pile of bodies and then the ball squirts out. The fumble at the goal line on the Montange side was a break for us as well. I was lucky enough to get to watch the 2nd half from a Morgan Suite and it looked like the ball had crossed the plane before he lost control.

Thanks. You are right about the passing game. Sams liability is indeed his passing accuracy. Our receivers are pretty good, but I know its hard to tell. With Sams, he makes up for it with great escape ability and open field running. He had 100+ rushing yards for the night.

 

Regarding the calls, I think you have a valid point, but MSU fans were really ticked about the called fumble & return for a TD. Granted, I did not have a great view of it, but the reaction by everyone on the field, with the exception of two Cardinal players, makes us believe he was down and the play was over. In any case, McNeese has to take better care of the ball in the playoffs. Leave NOTHING to the officials!

I was surprised too on that returned fumble. Bizarre looking play. The way it unfolded I thought it would get overturned. Like you, I really could not tell if it was a fumble or not but it did get reviewed so I assume it turned out to be the correct call

I was surprised too on that returned fumble. Bizarre looking play. The way it unfolded I thought it would get overturned. Like you, I really could not tell if it was a fumble or not but it did get reviewed so I assume it turned out to be the correct call

More likely, with the limited camera angles, they didn't have any that gave the definite proof needed to overturn the call on the field.

The KPLC Channel 7 sports guy was with me behind the northeast corner of the endzone and looking at the play on his video camera, the returner looked down. But they didn't have that KPLC guy's video to review.

Doc