After losing a tough one over the weekend to Coastal Carolina, the Louisiana Ragin Cajuns will be making a long trip over to Tuscaloosa, Alabama to take on the top-ranked Crimson Tide.
Without further ado, let’s get started with the preview!
Last Time Out:
The last time the Cajuns took the field, they came up just short against the Chanticleers of Coastal Carolina by the score of 30-28 thanks to a healthy dose of the triple option by Joe Moglia’s squad.
Meanwhile, Alabama rolled all over Texas A&M with a 45-23 win to improve to 4-0 on the season and 2-0 in the SEC.
Last Meeting:
The last time these two teams faced off was all the way back in 1990 when Gene Stallings led the Crimson Tide to a 25-6 win over Nelson Stokley’s Cajuns. Alabama has won all eight of the previous meetings with the Cajuns putting up a total of 53 points since they first met all the way back in 1941.
Storylines to Watch
Can the Cajuns Cover
Barring a complete and utter collapse, the Ragin Cajuns will likely take the loss to the Tide at 11 am. What’s of interest though is the spread for the ballgame. Once the attention turned from the loss to Coastal Carolina to the next matchup against Alabama was the spread, which started out at 50 points.
At the time of this writing, it’s listed as a 48.5 point spread. If it stayed at 50, I’d give the Cajuns a chance to cover it because that’s a seven touchdown deficit. However, 48.5 is very tough to cover because you’d have to score a touchdown and successfully execute a two-point conversion.
Stay Healthy
This is going to be a tough ballgame for the Cajuns with the type of talent that is on the other side of the football. One of the big keys for this ballgame is to stay as healthy as humanly possible.
It was one of the storylines against Mississippi State and will be huge for this team as they get ready for the bulk of conference play especially after possibly losing Zi’Yon Hill for a significant amount of time due to a shoulder injury. There’s nothing official, but losing a player like that, even for a couple weeks is tough.
Student vs Mentor
It’s a tremendous honor for Billy Napier to return to Tuscaloosa to coach against his mentor in Nick Saban. We all know the Cajuns head coach’s history with the Crimson Tide and that is a big reason why he honored to have his third ever game as a head coach against one of the best to ever do it.
Napier is ready for the challenge and will take some other nuggets of knowledge from Saban, but it’ll be more about his team than anything that’s in his notebook already.
Louisiana Will Win If:
The odds are not in favor for the Louisiana Ragin Cajuns since they’re facing undoubtedly one of the greatest head coaches in the history of college football and I think it’ll be a struggle for this team to even cover the spread. That being said, the Cajuns will have to be up and ready for an early morning matchup to try and make it not a complete embarrassment.
Alabama Will Win If:
It’s not a question of win, it’s more of a question about by how much they will win by. You’ll likely see Jalen Hurts in the ballgame before halftime and that could
-Clint Domingue