Football – Above average: season in review; Also check out the inaugural “Parrott Awards

Despite their .500 record, this UL team played well beyond expectations

Joshua Parrott • jparrott@theadvertiser.com • December 15, 2008

With UL’s football team coming off a 3-9 season, Michael Desormeaux truly believed the Cajuns would be better in 2008. The senior quarterback entered this year with his team picked sixth in the Sun Belt Conference’s preseason poll.

We feel like we’ve got a chance to be a very good football team," Desormeaux said in the preseason. "We’re putting down the groundwork right now to start something big this season."

He certainly helped his team raise some eyebrows this season.

UL went 6-6, marking the third time in four years the program was bowl eligible. That last happened in the mid-1990s.

But more importantly, despite a slew of injuries on both side of the ball and playing five of their first six games on the road, the Cajuns went 5-2 in league play and won four of five home games. That resulted in a second-place finish in the conference, only one game behind outright Sun Belt champion Troy.

When healthy, UL possessed one of the nation’s most potent offenses, tearing through opponents with Desormeaux and running back Tyrell Fenroy. The Cajuns got off to a slow start, losing their first two games, including a 30-point loss at Southern Miss and a 20-17 loss at then-24th-ranked Illinois.

Then their offense started to click like castanets.

In its home opener, UL set a school record with 667 yards in a 44-27 win over Kent State. The following week, the Cajuns lost at Kansas State, 45-37, despite putting up 335 rushing yards and 509 total yards.

UL opened conference play the following week at ULM, enjoying a night that will long be remembered. The Cajuns shredded the Warhawk defense for 556 rushing yards and 728 total yards – both the most in school history. They also set the league’s single-game rushing mark.

Fenroy spearheaded the attack, establishing a new school and conference record with 297 rushing yards in a 44-35 win. He also rushed for three scores and was named the Walter Camp Football Foundation offensive player of the week.

North Texas fell victim to UL one week later in a 59-30 blowout as wide receiver Jason Chery scored five times. He finished with 339 yards on eight touches as the Cajuns set the program’s modern-scoring record.

But disaster also struck that night as Desormeaux hurt his left knee in the fourth quarter. He did not look like the same player again until the final game of the regular season.

The injury kept him on the sideline in UL’s next game two weeks later against Arkansas State. With Desormeaux out, redshirt freshman Brad McGuire got his first career start. After some early struggles, the Florida native engineered two scoring drives in the final 4:39 to help the Cajuns rally for a 28-23 win.

Desormeaux returned against Florida International on Nov. 1 for homecoming, but he was unable to run effectively. Instead, the New Iberia native threw two touchdown passes and UL’s defense came up big for the second consecutive week in a 49-20 win.

Troy’s 31-30 loss to ULM that same night left the Cajuns, which moved to 5-3 overall by beating FIU, alone in first place in the league with a 4-0 conference mark. They had won four consecutive games and needed only one win to gain bowl eligibility.

But the injury bug, turnover issues and defensive inconsistencies finally caught up with UL, which lost three consecutive games to UTEP and defending conference co-champions Florida Atlantic and Troy. A hobbled Desormeaux gave opponents a chance to focus on Fenroy. The once-explosive offense still got its yards but failed to score points.

A young Cajun defense showed its inexperience, which was not a surprise with as many as five starting linebackers missing significant time this season. UL got out-scored by a 125-56 margin in those three losses.

After a 48-3 loss at Troy on Nov. 22, Desormeaux and his teammates got a 10-day layoff before UL’s regular season finale against Middle Tennessee. The time off helped the Cajuns grab a 42-28 win behind Desormeaux’s career-high four touchdown passes and an opportunistic defense. The win put the program in position for its first bowl bid in 38 years.

Instead, history would have to wait as UL got left out of the postseason. Did the Cajuns, which beat teams with a combined 25-39 mark but none with a winning record, deserve to play in a bowl? Not necessarily. But did they have a convincing argument over 6-6 bowl-bound teams such as Northern Illinois and Florida Atlantic? Absolutely.

NIU, which will play Louisiana Tech in the Independence Bowl in Shreveport, beat teams with a combined 18-54 record. That included a winless FCS team in Indiana State.

FAU will face Central Michigan in the Motor City Bowl in Detroit after its six wins came against opponents that totaled a 22-50 mark.

Neither NIU nor FAU beat a team with a winning record.

Instead of getting hotter than a pot of boiling gumbo, UL coach Rickey Bustle said his team should have taken control of its own destiny. With one more win, the Cajuns would have been guaranteed to make a bowl game ahead of a 6-6 team.

"I think this football team deserved a chance to play in a bowl game," Bustle said. "You just have to live and learn."

That heartbreak does little to tarnish what was a memorable season. Another play or two at Illinois and Kansas State and the Cajuns likely upset a major BCS conference school. UL’s offense dominated for most of the season, with its running attack ranking sixth in the nation.

Fenroy became the career rushing leader for UL, the Sun Belt and the state and only the seventh player in NCAA history with four 1,000-yard rushing seasons. He was a semifinalist for the Doak Walker Award and was named the league’s player of the year. He also had his No. 32 jersey retired.

Playing through injury, Desormeaux proved to be grittier than sandpaper. He became only the eighth NCAA quarterback with back-to-back 1,000-yard rushing seasons and was named the conference’s offensive player of the year.

Chery finished the season with 1,921 all-purpose yards – the second-highest single-season total in league history.

Fenroy and Desormeaux both topped 1,000-yards rushing for the second consecutive season, joining former West Virginia stars Pat White and Steve Slaton as the NCAA’s only quarterback-running back tandems to do so.

In all, eight UL players received 11 individual honors from the Sun Belt. Thirteen seniors exhausted their eligibility this fall, but only six were full-time starters – Desormeaux, Fenroy and Chery on offense, defensive tackle Lanier Coleman and strong safety Derik Keyes on defense and kicker Drew Edmiston on special teams.

So that means UL should bring back a strong nucleus on both sides of the ball. The offense will have a new starting quarterback and running back, but the return of five starters up front should ease that transition. The defense will be a year older and likely much improved. And it’s hard to imagine the team suffering as many injuries to key players again next season.

The next step is for the Cajuns to learn their lessons from this season and somehow carry that into 2009.