(DESIGNATED EDITOR’S NOTE: Tech beat Rice 28-13 Saturday and moved to 7-3. The Bulldogs guaranteed themselves a bowl game — fifth season in a row and the only team in C-USA to win at least 7 games in each of the past five seasons. Tech won’t play for the C-USA title though: UAB, unbeaten in league play, clinched the West with an overtime victory over Southern Miss. Tech is at Southern Miss Saturday at 2:30 p.m. and closes out the regular season two days after Thanksgiving with an 11 a.m. home game against Western Kentucky.)

Louisiana Tech’s football team is 6-3 overall and 4-1 in Conference USA going into Saturday’s 6:05 kickoff against Rice (1-9,0-6) in Joe Aillet Stadium in Ruston.

Tech’s losses have come on the road at LSU and Mississippi State and at home in the C-USA opener against Alabama-Birmingham, 28-7. That UAB game was not Tech’s finest hour but it’s a bit more understandable this deep into the season since UAB leads the nation in scoring defense at 12.1 points a game allowed.

It’s easy to forget, since hardly anything has been “easy” for Tech this year, that the Bulldogs’ 6-3 record is the same at this point of the season as it was in 2014-16, the first three seasons of four consecutive bowl-winning (2014-17) teams. The 2014 and 2016 teams played for and lost the conference title game; each of those three teams from 2014-16 finished with 9 wins.

As those teams did at this point in their seasons, the 2018 tech team has a chance to win 10 games. Even 11, if Tech wins out and UAB, unbeaten in the league, stumbles in its final two league games; for Tech to get to the title game, the Blazers must first lose to Southern Miss Saturday or Tech’s chance of a league title dies. And Tech has to win its final three, starting by going 1-0 against Rice Saturday, then winning at USM next week and at home against Western Kentucky the Saturday after Thanksgiving, a hard-to-believe two weeks from Saturday. UAB goes to Texas A&M next week and closes the season on the road against C-USA’s Middle Tennessee State.

Tech averaged 37.4 points a game in 2014 (14^th in the nation), 37.5 in 2015 (19^th), and 44.3 in 2016, second-best in the country. Yet those teams have the same record after 9 games as this year’s team that’s averaging 25.2 points a game, 97^th out of the 130 teams playing.

Your grandmamma might not know squat about football but would read that and figure that there’s more than one way to skin a cat. She would be correct.

Tech found scoring easier in 2014-16, but the winning was just as tough as it is now. It’s hard to win games, and you win them the best way you can. For Tech this year, it’s been by playing better defense than in the past and by protecting the ball. Instead of fifth-year quarterbacks as those teams had or tandem threats at running back, Tech has a second-year QB in junior J’Mar Smith, and running backs Jaqwis Dancy and Israel Tucker have taken turns being hurt. This team has allowed more sacks than Tech teams in the previous four seasons, so there have been more QB throwaways. This team has dropped more passes than the receivers from 2014-2017 too.

But still, the most important number—the tally mark on the left side of the hyphen in the team’s record—is 6-3, just as it was when the Bulldogs were second in the nation in scoring.

You try to win however you need to do it and can do it.

In 2008 and 2009, East Carolina, coached then by present-day Tech coach Skip Holtz, won back-to-back C-USA titles. Each of those teams lost bowl games and finished with 9-win seasons.

The 2008 ECU title team scored 30 or more only twice; Tech’s got three games left and has scored 30 or more three times this fall.

The 2009 team scored 30 or more five times, all in the final 8 games. But the number of wins was still the same as the year before.

The point is, you get there how you can best get there. Sometimes it’s with just enough offense and a pretty good defense, and sometimes the other way around.

Last year’s Tech team averaged 30.5 points a game. But the Bulldogs were 4-5 after nine games, lost Game 10 to fall to 4-6, then rallied to win its final two regular season games plus a bowl game in which Tech beat SMU 51-10. Tech finished 47^th out of 130 teams in scoring offense. And finished 7-6.

This year’s team is scoring almost a touchdown less a game than last year’s — 25.2 points on average — but has already won two more games at this point of the season and can get to 7 wins, last year’s total, Saturday. That’s with a scoring offense that ranks just 97^th out of 130 teams — but with a defense that ranks 52^nd out of 130 teams and allows just 24.6 points a game. (When last year’s season ended, the Tech defense ranked 54^th; this year’s crew will probably finish in the 40s.)

For a variety of reasons, Tech’s got different tools in its tool shed this year than it had on those high-scoring teams. But the finished product is starting to look fairly familiar.

So as a fan of Tech’s team or of any team, a fan has to decide what he or she wants: big numbers on the stat sheet and a little number on the left side of the hyphen, or “who cares” numbers on the stat sheet and a big number on the left side of the hyphen? Big numbers in both places would be ideal, but as the Rolling Stones famously sang, “You can’t always get what you want …”

Still … if you try sometime you just might find you get what you need. So with the Rolling Stones Theory of Football on the table, just what is it you want and what is it you need?

You want numbers. But you need W’s. Not every W is going to look good in a swim suit, but boy, can she cook. And don’t she smell good! Let’s eat!

First downs and touchdowns are the only numbers that tell you a bunch on a stat sheet. Three-and-outs and turnovers are what’s up on defense. Those get you to wins quicker than anything. Style points are nice and fun, but when your style is altered a bit for whatever reason, you sacrifice that and try to win games any way you can.

That seems to be what Tech’s doing now. Sometimes it’s seemed frustrating and sometimes it’s been head-scratching…but it’s working.

Almost forgot: fans get upset because fans are fans and that’s part of it. We get spoiled. We’re human. With short memories. This year’s Tech team, as herky-jerky as it has been offensively, has a chance to do its part in a potential 10-win season. When’s the last time a Tech team did that?

No current Tech player was born yet, and neither were the graduate assistants, and neither was the internet — back in 1984.

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