It has been a long and grueling season for Louisiana Tech. In the rushing and passing games, on both the offensive and defensive sides of the ball, the Bulldogs have struggled all year long and limp into the season finale against UAB in the Blazers’ final game in Conference USA.

Things, of course, didn’t quite go to plan for the departing team from Birmingham. After Bill Clark’s sudden retirement before the season, Bryant Vincent had some impossibly large shoes to fill. But yet, the 2022 Blazer team comes to town one game out of bowl eligibility with one game to go.

With a point spread of 17.5, getting to a fifth bowl game in six years seems about as much of a done deal as you can get in sports.

The Blazers excel at running the ball. Tech has the worst rush defense in college football.

UAB has been able to keep QB Dylan Hopkins upright. The Bulldogs have the 9th worst pass rush in college football.

The green-and-white are the 26th-best team in FBS football at converting third downs. The red-and-blue are the 17th worst in the nation at defending those same situations.

Vegas expects a blood bath (and who could blame them), but instead of rehashing how poorly our pass defense or rush offense has performed, let’s look at field goals:

Just looking at percentage, the teams are about equally matched when it comes to making field goals. UAB’s Matt Quinn has a long of 51, and Buck Buchanan has nailed one from 52. Both Quinn and Jacob Barnes are 11 of 14 from inside 40 yards.

But what the Blazers haven’t had to deal with is blocked kicks. On Saturday, Charlotte blocked a 36-yard field goal that would have given the Bulldogs an early lead. It was the fifth block allowed by Tech on the season.

UAB, like 35 other teams, has not allowed a single one of their kicks to be blocked.

On the other side of the ball, things look even bleaker for Louisiana Tech:

40% of field goals attempted against UAB have not gone through the uprights. Only one of those was blocked, but either the defensive field goal unit is forcing bad kicks, or the non-field goal defensive unit is forcing long field goal attempts.

More surprising is that the Bulldogs have yet to see one of their opponents miss a field goal all year. Some of that is skill (or lack thereof in a field goal-blocking unit), but there’s also luck.

Luck has been in short supply this season for Tech. A difficult quarterback situation, two overtime losses, and a plethora of injuries have all hurt a Bulldog team that needed quite a few things to go their way this year to sniff a successful season.

But then again, maybe we’ve just been saving up all of our luck to cash in this week to hand one of our biggest conference rivals a losing season as they head out the door.

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Nathan is also a contributor to gtpdd.dog, a lighthearted Louisiana Tech blog. Be sure to check out @gotechplsdntdie on Twitter.