An Epic Battle Between Two Red Hot Teams
Tuesday, October 15, 2013 – Houchens – L.T. Smith Stadium, Bowling Green, KY 7:00 CDT ESPN 2
Tonight's game between Lousianna Lafayette and Western Kentucky University promises to be a battle. Lafayette has a powerful offense led by Terrence Broadway at Quarterback. In essence, this is the guy the Hilltoppers must stop in order to win this game. If nothing else, containing the Broadway in the pocket and not letting him scramble for big yards will be the task at hand.
In the past the Hilltopper defense has not had success stopping such dual threat quarterbacks. In the game against Navy, Andrew Jackson's hit on their QB basically set up the win for the Toppers. In the Topper's game against South Alabama it was Brandon Bridge's legs that put them back in the game.
While there are many factors in winning a football game, this is the single most important factor for the Toppers. Everything else the Toppers do makes this game very winnable.
For the Cajuns, they will do their best to shut down the WKU running game, which is mostly but not only made up of Antonio Andrews. Unfortunately for the Cajuns, the feeling around BG is that the Toppers are on the brink of breaking out and putting up outstanding numbers on offense. Brandon Doughty has grown as a QB, his accurate throws a test for any secondary and his wide diversity of targets from running backs, tight ends and an ever growing number of avaiable receivers place the Toppers as one of the most dangerous it has ever had on the field in history, IMHO.
Defensively, the Toppers have underperformed considering the number of interception opportunities they have had. However, the group is a stingy, hard nosed and fast group that doesn't mind hitting you hard.
While my knowledge of the Cajuns is limited, I suspect they are a very good team with many weapons and good athelets.
Coaching wise, this will be a good game to watch as well. Petrino vs Hudspeth is a matchup of very good coaches. This will be a great game to watch.
My prediction is the Tops are able to control Broadway enough to win and barring any turnovers, all things being equal, the Tops win by 14 points.
Go Tops!