Louisiana Tech went to Troy on Saturday, Nov. 7, lost its starting quarterback early in the third quarter, and still won by 24.
That's where the Bulldogs are in year one of the Sun Belt Conference. The 41-17 win at Troy made it six straight. Tech is 7-2 overall and 5-0 in league play, the only Sun Belt team without a conference loss. ULL, the Ragin' Cajuns, is two games back at 3-2. Everyone else in the West already has at least three conference losses.
We went through the receipts a week ago. I'm doing it again anyway, because some folks out east are still talking.
One win away
Tech has three games left. Southern Miss comes to Ruston on Saturday, Nov. 14, Arkansas State follows on Nov. 21, and then it's a trip to Georgia Southern on Nov. 28.
One more win clinches the West outright. ULL is the only team that can still finish with two conference losses, and Tech already beat ULL, so the tiebreaker is ours. Nobody else can do better than 5-3.
For Tech to miss, it would have to lose all three and then either watch ULL win out or lose a multi-team tiebreaker. Give Tech an 85% chance against Southern Miss, 78% against Arkansas State and a coin flip in Statesboro, and an 0-3 finish comes out to about 1.5%. Tech would still survive some of those scenarios. My rough math puts it around 99%.
Beat Southern Miss at Joe Aillet and it's wrapped up with two weeks to spare.
Since the Sun Belt split into divisions in 2018, the West has had two owners. ULL won it four straight years from 2018 to 2021 and again in 2024. Troy won it in 2022, 2023 and 2025. Nobody else has won the West.
Tech beat ULL 32-31 in October after scoring 19 points in the fourth quarter. On Nov. 7 it beat Troy by 24 in the first meeting ever between the two programs. That gave Tech its first 5-0 start in league play since 2019.
The new guy didn't win the West by dodging the usual powers. It beat both of them, and it did it in year one.
The defense, again
Troy ran the ball 32 times for 47 yards. It went 3 of 14 on third down and turned it over five times. Alonzo Jackson had 11 tackles and two sacks, forced a fumble, and returned another one 66 yards for the final touchdown.
Look closer at Troy's 17 points. Seven came when Delvin Whitaker fell on a Blake Baker fumble in Tech's end zone after a sack. The Troy offense scored 10.
That's the pattern now. Tech has allowed 68 points in five conference games, with shutouts of ULM and Old Dominion and a scoreless second half at South Alabama. The offense has been good. The defense has been the reason.
Baker was 16 of 19 for 177 yards and a touchdown before the injury, and he finished the game in a boot on the sideline. Afterward Sonny Cumbie said, "I don't believe it to be long term." Trey Kukuk came in and went 8 of 10 with a touchdown to Eli Finley. If Baker needs a week, Southern Miss is the right week to need it.
What they said
When the league voted Tech in, one fan on X summed up the mood with "Literally ZERO fans of current members want them here." Marshall's contingent was reportedly the loudest no in the room. Plenty in the East wanted East Carolina instead, and one poster crowned Appalachian State, James Madison, Coastal Carolina and Marshall as "The Big Four."
The preseason projections weren't much warmer. The coaches picked Tech fourth in the West. ESPN's SP+ projected 6.4 wins, 4.7 of them in the Sun Belt. College Football News predicted 6-6. Tech already has seven wins, five of them in league play, with three games left.
College Football News also said Tech would get a break by playing in the softer West, with no JMU or Marshall on the schedule. That part is fair. Tech didn't draw JMU or Marshall, and that helps. We also earned some of the hostility. A former Tech AD famously talked down to this league, and our own message board got credit for calling it the Sun Belch. If you dish it out for 20 years, you take some back.
So how's the Big Four doing? App State is 2-3 in the league. The Mountaineers lost at home to Old Dominion 10-3 and lost at home again Nov. 7, 39-23 to Georgia State.
Coastal is 2-3. On Nov. 7 it lost at home to Old Dominion, the same Old Dominion team Tech shut out 26-0. Tech also beat Coastal 23-14 in the Independence Bowl last December.
Marshall is 2-3. It lost 49-13 at Georgia Southern on Nov. 7, and back in September it beat FCS Gardner-Webb by one point.
JMU is the real one. The Dukes are 8-2 and 5-2, and they beat Georgia Southern on the road. They also lost to App State and then lost at home to Troy, the same Troy team Tech just beat by 24.
Put together, the Big Four is 11-11 in conference play. The team leading the East is Georgia Southern, which nobody put on that list. And JMU, the flagship of the better division, announced last month that it's leaving for the American by 2028, reportedly timed to get out ahead of a vote on higher exit fees.
The cross-division results don't settle anything either. West teams are 3-2 against the East so far. Troy won at JMU, Arkansas State beat Georgia State, and Tech blanked ODU. Marshall beat South Alabama and JMU beat Southern Miss. Five games isn't proof the West is better. It isn't proof of the opposite either, and that's the claim that keeps getting made. Even the title game history is close. The East leads 4-3 since 2018, and the West won three straight from 2021 to 2023.
Bring it to Ruston
The Sun Belt title game is Dec. 5 at the home of the division champion with the better conference record. If the records are tied, the first tiebreaker is head-to-head. If the two teams didn't play, it goes to a composite of computer rankings, which is how ULL got the 2024 game over Marshall.
That makes Nov. 28 in Statesboro the game that decides it. If Tech wins, Georgia Southern can't finish better than 6-2, and the title game almost certainly comes to Ruston. The funny part is that a Tech win there could hand the East to JMU, which owns the tiebreaker over Georgia Southern if the Dukes beat Coastal. So the Big Four might get its title game appearance because of Tech, and then have to come to Ruston to play it.
If Tech loses in Statesboro and Georgia Southern wins out, the rematch is a week later on Georgia Southern's field. I'd rather not find out.
A year ago Tech wasn't wanted, wasn't good enough, and was supposedly about to hide in the easy division. The easy division sent Troy into Harrisonburg and won. Now its newest member is one win away from the title game, and three wins away from getting there unbeaten in league play.
Come to Ruston on Dec. 5 and tell us again.
