Trojans prepare for battle in Louisiana
After dominating the Southern Miss Golden Eagles 55-34, Troy is heading to the bayou to take on the Louisiana Ragin Cajuns.
In the win against Southern Miss, Troy totaled over 600 yards of offense. While the team had 225 passing yards, the Trojans showed their dominance in the run game as the team rushed for 437 yards.
“There’s a little bit of a feeling of confidence in knowing what we can be,” said head coach Gerad Parker. “I think there are always good signs in knowing we can keep our sack number low, and we can run the football at the level we did against Southern Miss.
“Also, knowing that it gets harder to do, but it all starts with our line of scrimmage and our ability to keep away negative plays in sacks and tackles for loss.”
Leading the way for the Trojans in the rushing attack was quarterback Goose Crowder with 145 yards and two touchdowns and running back Jordan Lovett, who finished with 142 yards and a touchdown.
Even though they did not reach the century mark, tailbacks Gavin Griffin and Jaheim Merriweather both rushed for over 70 yards and a touchdown each. Crowder said the key for the team is to make this performance repeatable.
“It makes my job a lot easier,” Crowder said. “Those guys are awesome; they play for each other, and they're great teammates.
“I think we put together four quarters of football that we could be proud of, but the key to that is obviously repeating it.”
On defense, Troy held Southern Miss to only seven points in the first half before allowing 20 in the third quarter. Coach Parker said if the team focuses on its technique, it will lower the defensive penalties, which helped extend the Golden Eagles' drives in the third quarter.
“The biggest key pieces of our secondary are footwork, eyes and communication,” Parker said. “Those three areas are the three keys that we've talked about and worked on a little bit already in practice.
“It'll be the key topics of what we do this week in our preparation, and then they've got to do it. If they value that and we continue to coach them better, we're going to see climbs or more confidence for them, so we can get that number to go down and start to play more sound out there.
For the 4-1 Louisiana Ragin Cajuns, the team is coming off its first loss of the season, falling to Louisiana Tech, 32-31. Leading the way for the Ragin Cajuns is quarterback Lunch Winfield, who has over 1,000 yards passing this season and almost 400 yards rushing.
“They've upped the tempo at times and played a little bit faster on offense,” Parker said. “Lunch is playing at an extremely high level. He's an even better runner and passer now than he was a year ago.
“He's clearly the leader of that football team and the offense. I have a lot of respect for him and how physically tough he is.”
Troy intends to start conference play 2-0 when it faces off against Louisiana Saturday night. Kickoff at Cajun Field is set for 4 p.m., with the game streaming live on ESPN+.
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