Sun Belt Sports Fans

Western Kentucky 54, Louisiana-Lafayette 21

With each touchdown the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers scored on Saturday afternoon in Lafayette, Louisiana, a little extra bit of catharsis was attained. With each seven-point tally, each passage to the goal line, a sideline full of young men began to absorb a most blessed realization: The nightmare is over.

Yes, the sad and sorry spectacle of the nation’s longest major-college slide has come to an end. The nation’s longest FBS losing streak ended at 26 games for Western Kentucky. The victorious Hilltoppers went into Cajun Field and finally put a halt to their misery two full years after it began.

Not since 2008 had WKU won a game, and after blowing double-digit fourth quarter leads in last year’s season finale (to Arkansas State) and the previous week of this season’s slate (Louisiana-Monroe), one had to wonder whether coach Willie Taggart’s team was genuinely capable of doing the deed. The Hilltoppers had tasted prosperity for potions of games in the recent past, but they had never been able to close the sale, never been able to sprint to the finish line and hit the tape first. Therefore, even when things started brightly for the visitors on their road trip to the Bayou, there was still cause for concern. When Western Kentucky grabbed a 27-7 halftime lead, the Hilltoppers still couldn’t have felt all that safe. When Louisiana-Lafayette marched smartly downfield to score a touchdown and cut the WKU lead to only 13 points (27-14) early in the third quarter, a few fans in the stands could have been forgiven for thinking or saying, “Gee – Lafayette has the Hilltoppers right where they wanted ‘em!”

That’s unsettling enough; the even more disturbing part of that hypothetical is that it was almost surely a reflection of actual reality. When a team throws away so many late-game advantages the way WKU has done over time, a 13-point third-quarter lead is hardly the paragon of safety and security. Coach Taggart and the rest of the Western Kentucky braintrust had certainly talked with their charges about the need to step up at crunch time; without a bold response to pressure, what more could this team have done? What more could the coaches have tried in order to shake WKU loose from its bizarre and perplexing spell?

At long last, the Hilltoppers did indeed buy what their coaches were selling. On this afternoon, the bunch from Bowling Green (Kentucky, that is; not Bowling Green, Ohio) kept pounding and pounding away until the job was finished. A 1-yard touchdown run by quarterback Kawaun Jakes made the score 34-14. A 43-yard scoring pass from Jakes to Demetrius Coley pushed the tally to 40-14 (the PAT failed).

The Hilltoppers hadn’t flushed all the anger from their system.

Derrius Brooks intercepted a pass by ULL quarterback Chris Masson and took it 62 yards to the end zone for a pick-six that gave WKU a 47-14 bulge. That still wasn’t enough, though: Only after Antonio Andrews ripped off a 30-yard touchdown run did the winless, hapless, hopeless ballclub in the FBS finally feel that it had scaled the mountain. Only with a 40-point fourth-quarter lead could this team rest, safe in the knowledge it had snapped a seemingly endless stretch of misery.

Now, when Western Kentucky wins another game, it won’t be such a big deal. The healing can truly begin for a program that must learn to duplicate the result it produced on a significant Saturday.

Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer