2018 College Football Team Previews: Louisiana-Lafayette Ragin’ Cajuns
Louisiana-Lafayette Ragin’ Cajuns
Location: Lafayette, LA
Coach: Billy Napier (0-0) 1st Season
Stadium: Cajun Field (Capacity: 41,426)
CSJ Projections:
7th: Sun Belt (3rd West Division)
7th: Louisiana
118th: FBS
154th: Division I
2017 In A Sentence: After a 5-7 overall record,Louisiana-Lafayette fired its head coach Mark Hudspeth, who led the Cajuns to five straight New Orleans Bowls prior to three straight losing seasons.
Biggest Shoes to Fill: S Tracy (Trey) Walker finished his Cajun career as the team-leader in tackles (97) and interceptions (2) last year. He added six pass break ups and 3.5 tackles for loss. He finished his career ranked third all-time in UL-L history for tackles by a defensive back (276 career tackles). He was drafted in the NFL Draft’s third round by the Detroit Lions.
Key Player: RB Trey Ragas led the team with 813 yards and nine touchdowns and was sixth in the SBC in yards per game in his freshman season. The now-sophomore ranked 33rd nationally in yards per carry (5.88) and recorded a pair of 100-yard rushing games.
Fearless Prediction: The main reason for last season’s losing was the defensive side–ranked next to last in almost all Sun Belt statistics so the new Coach Napier (formerly Arizona State’s offensive coordinator) hired former SE Louisiana head coach Ron Roberts to be the new defensive coordinator. If the defense gets turned around, the Cajuns have plenty of firepower on offense to get back to a winning season.
Originally from LaMoure, North Dakota, Kent is a 1996 graduate of North Dakota State University. His prior writing experience is over 15 years having previously worked with D2football.com, I-AA.org, and College Sporting News before coming to College Sports Journal in 2016. His main focus is college football is the Missouri Valley Football Conference within the Division I FCS. And in 2017, he began also to look at the FBS Group of Five conferences of the American Athletic, Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West, and Sun Belt.
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