By Dan McDonald (Special to ESPN1420)

The disappointing 35-16 loss to Appalachian State in last Saturday’s home finale puts UL and Ragin’ Cajun fans in an awkward position this week.

For the Cajuns to claim a share of the Sun Belt Conference regular-season title, they obviously need a win in Saturday’s regular-season finale at Troy. The Cajuns also need for Georgia Southern to lose to UL Monroe, which makes the Cajuns big fans of the Warhawks for one week.

The thought of that is enough to turn the stomachs of many UL faithful ... but probably no more than watching what happened last Saturday when the Cajuns saw a six-game winning streak vanish at the hands of a surprising Mountaineer squad.

Make no mistake, Saturday’s win wasn’t a fluke. AppState was the first team to push the Cajuns around since the early-season loss at Boise State. And the Mountaineers did it by using UL’s own M.O. against them.

The Cajuns had posted eye-popping rushing numbers in those six wins, and in many of those games they were successful in controlling the ball via the rush in the final quarter. Last Saturday, though, it was the Mountaineers who held the ball for over 10:30 in the final period, ran the ball down the Cajuns’ throats on two late drives, and limited UL to only 14 offensive yards and one first down in the fourth quarter.

That’s got to change in a hurry if UL is going to post a fourth straight eight-win regular season and have a chance at another 9-4 finish with a fourth straight bowl win.

WHERE Y’AT: The home finale drew only 20,638 fans, way under the season average, and even the final tally of 154,652 for six home games (second-highest in school history) and the final 25,775 average (third-highest) couldn’t cover up what was an embarrassingly small crowd.

With everything that was happening – Senior Day for far and away the most successful senior-class group in school history (34 wins and counting and three first-ever D-I bowl wins), honoring of the late Orlando Thomas since his passing two weeks ago, Military Appreciation Day and the retirement of the #5 jersey of one of the most popular players in school history in Charles Tillman – there’s no excuse for the stadium to be just over half-full.

Yes, the late move to a 1 p.m. start had an effect, but that wasn’t that different from the originally-scheduled 4 p.m. start. The weather was never a factor.

Coach Hark Hudspeth said during the week that getting 30,000 in the stands to see a program that had won three straight bowl games and had three straight nine-win seasons wasn’t that much to ask. He’s right.

Cajun fans like to compare themselves to other programs in the “Group of Five” conferences, so let’s take one at random that’s familiar. The Cajuns faced East Carolina in the New Orleans Bowl two seasons ago and won 43-34.

ECU was 7-3 entering Saturday, just like the Cajuns, and was a big favorite in what turned out to be a 34-6 runaway over Tulane. It wasn’t even senior day since the Pirates have a Thursday, Dec. 4, finale. Still, 48,334 turned out to nearly fill 50,000-seat Ficklen Stadium. That’s known as a consistent fan base, something the Cajuns are still trying to develop.

For the thousands of you who didn’t bother to come out on Saturday, maybe you don’t deserve to have the kind of success the Cajuns have put on the field for the past four years.

BOWL NUMBERS: The chances of the Sun Belt getting an extra team into a postseason bowl, as well as Georgia Southern’s chances of making a bowl appearance, took a major hit over the past weekend.

With the results from the weekend, 71 teams nationally are bowl-eligible for a total of 76 available bowl spots. That leaves only five spots to be filled, and it’s actually only three since four teams (Northwestern-Illinois and Virginia Tech-Virginia) play each other this Saturday with the winner becoming bowl eligible. Over the next two weekends, 13 teams nationally can still reach bowl eligibility and are gunning for those remaining three spots.

That’s not good news for Georgia Southern, which as a transition team from the FCS can only earn a bowl invitation if fewer than 76 teams nationally are bowl-eligible. That means that 11 of the remaining 13 possibilities would have to lose to give GSU a spot.

That’s not likely to happen considering that some prohibitive favorites need only a win – Tennessee against Vanderbilt, Fresno State against Hawaii, Akron against Kent State, Navy against South Alabama among others – to get to the magic six wins .

What’s more probable is that more than 76 teams will wind up eligible, and that will put a Sun Belt team on the bubble. The league is locked into three bowls in New Orleans, Mobile and Montgomery, and currently has four eligible teams in UL, Arkansas State, South Alabama and Texas State.

The Cajuns are locked into one of those three sites as the league’s most desirable bowl team both record-wise and because of past attendance history, regardless of what happens at Troy this weekend. The other lock is likely USA, if for no other reason that two of the three Sun Belt bowls are in Alabama.

Arkansas State appeared to be a lock two weeks ago before the Red Wolves lost to both Appalachian State and Texas State. A-State is still the likely third team because of geography, being located closer to all three and having taken respectable crowds to Mobile in each of the last three years.

Each national eligible team over the necessary 76 reduces the chances of the Sun Belt’s fourth team getting an invitation.

 CAJUNS BOWLING: Familiarity does not breed contempt when it comes to UL’s bowl invitations. In fact, the Cajuns and the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl have such a good relationship that they’re likely headed for a fourth straight hookup.

Anyone who might think the bowl game would want a different Sun Belt team for the sake of variety, or that the Cajuns would shun the nearby bowl just for the sake of other opportunities, would be gravely mistaken.

New Orleans Bowl executive director Billy Ferrante was at Saturday’s final Cajun home game, and made it clear that his game would not hesitate to take the Cajuns if they so chose, and were made available by the Sun Belt.

“We’d love to have them,” Ferrante said on Sports Radio ESPN 1420’s “The Rage” post-game show last Saturday..

It’s no secret why. The bowl has drawn 42,481, 48,828 and 54,728 fans in the last three years when UL made up half of the matchup, after never drawing more than 30,228 in its first decade of existence. The Cajuns have also provided two of the best finishes in recent bowl history, winning 32-30 over San Diego State on Brett Baer’s last-play 50-yard field goal in 2011 and 24-21 over Tulane last year when the Wave missed a potential tying 48-yard field goal with 0:13 left.

The difference this year is that, because of the new College Football Playoff and its Dec. 7 announcement of its four-team field, no other bowl games can officially extend invitations until the afternoon of Sunday, Dec. 7. There will likely be agreements in place before that time, but nothing will be official.

That means there will be less than two weeks for UL to take care of all its preparations – including ticket sales – between the announcement and the Dec. 20 New Orleans Bowl. Because of that, UL athletic officials are expected to announce a pre-sale for bowl tickets early this week.

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