Boxscore

Louisiana Tech dug an early hole, but second half turnovers forced by the Bulldogs defense helped spark 24 unanswered points en route to a 31-21 win over Nicholls State Saturday night at Joe Aillet Stadium.

Tech coach Jack Bicknell said the defense came up with big plays at opportune times and his offense took advantage by putting points on the board.

?(Nicholls is) a darn good football team,? Tech head coach Jack Bicknell said. ?They were a nightmare to cover and defend early on. Their fullback and quarterback did a great job. They were a very physical football team.?

Sophomore running back Patrick Jackson had a career night for the Bulldogs as he tallied his first career 100-yard rushing game. Jackson ran for 116 yards on 23 carries. He also scored his first touchdown of the season on a six-yard run in the third quarter.

Bicknell said he was happy to see his running back shine at Joe Aillet Stadium on the Bulldogs? first game on their new FieldTurf.

?I felt like he did a nice job running the ball,? Bicknell said. ?They were blitzing us quite a bit making it tough for us to run. We took some shots down the field, but we got to the point where we sure didn?t want to give them the ball back. We felt like we could run the ball on them. So we said, ?Hey, let?s just run the dang thing.? Patrick and Freddie Franklin did a nice job doing that.?

Tech (1-1) found itself down in a hole after giving up a 17-yard touchdown run on Nicholls State?s first offensive possession. The Bulldogs answered with a score of their own, but fumbles on their next two possessions allowed the Colonels to take the lead.

The defense gave up a 50-yard touchdown strike to Grant Thorne for the Colonels (1-2) to go up 14-7. Nicholls State would take a 21-7 after scoring after Tech?s second fumble.

?It?s all about field position,? Bicknell said. ?We gave up a big kickoff to start the game, and then we fumble the ball three times in the first half and gave up good field position for them. The same thing that happened to us in the first half happened to them in the second half.?

The Bulldogs offense came alive in the second quarter and began its run to claim the lead and run away from the Colonels.

Danny Horwedel kicked a 22-yard field goal to cut into the lead with 6:57 remaining in the first half. Then Zac Champion found Josh Wheeler for a 15-yard touchdown pass to make the score 21-17 in favor of Nicholls State.

Tech?s defense shutdown the triple-option of Nicholls State from the second quarter on as the Colonels could not score from then on out. Nicholls State turned the ball over once on downs and fumbled twice as well after taking a 21-7 lead.

?We?ve got depth issues, and we tried to keep our defense off the field as much as we could,? Nicholls head coach Jay Thomas said. ?We?ve got to be able to do that. We?re going to have that situation in just about every ballgame.?

Bicknell said his defense showed progress by shutting the Colonels down after the first quarter and hopes to see the Bulldogs continue to hunt down the football like they did against Nicholls State.

Tech hits the road for their next three games beginning with Texas A&M on Saturday Sept. 23 at Kyle Field at 6 p.m.