It's do or die time in Sonny Cumbie's second year as head coach. The Bulldogs are 3 wins away from bowl eligibility, and have 3 games left to play. On the other side of the field will be a red and blue team that's had a lot more success this season - the 8-0 Liberty Flames. What can Tech do to douse the fire and stay on track in 2023?

Turnovers

It's not rocket science. When teams turn the ball over a lot, they usually lose. When they take the ball away from the other team, they usually win.

Here's two pieces of terrible news: 1) Liberty excels at taking the ball away from their opponents. They're forcing 2.4 turnovers per game by their opponents this season. 2) Tech stinks at takeaways, ranking 129th with only 0.5 per game this season.

If you look at Liberty's schedule, you'll notice that while they haven't lost any games this season, they've played a couple of close games to pretty bad opponents. In fact, in their last two home games, Liberty needed a late TD at home to break a tie with 2-5 MTSU, and they forced a turnover on downs with 7 seconds left in the game up 5 on winless Sam Houston State.

Why?

One big reason was that they didn't force a lot of turnovers in either game. Against MTSU, they lost the turnover battle 3-2, and the BearKats played a pretty clean game and tied Liberty 1-1 in that column. Tech can hang in this game if they win the turnover battle.

Fourth Quarter Battle

Okay, here's an area where both teams actually excel a little bit. When it comes to the fourth quarter, Tech is actually scoring a lot of points (8.4 per game in the fourth - ranked 32nd nationally). This has been frustrating to watch as fans - we see our Dogs struggle for 45 minutes, only to watch them claw back into it... just to rip our hearts out at the end.

Unfortunately for the Dogs, Liberty has the 6th ranked scoring Defense in the 4th Quarter, allowing just 3.1 points per game in the fourth.

So what'll it be? Will Tech be able to put up some points after putting up their four fingers on the sideline? Or will Liberty keep the door closed, like they did to Sam Houston at the 3 yard line? If Tech wants a chance to win, they'd better win the 4th quarter scoring battle... because:

If Tech wants to win, they're going to have to act like it for 60 minutes

I'm honestly tired of writing these. I'm tired of looking into advanced stats and coming up with reasons why Tech should - or at best, could - win Saturday. The bottom line is that Liberty should beat the pants off of us tomorrow. But they should've destroyed Sam Houston, and they should've destroyed Middle Tennessee... and yes, they won those games. But they looked vulnerable doing it.

Tech has had one game in its last essentially 4 weeks. Mentally, they should be locked in. Physically, they should be ready to rumble. Ready to hit somebody. Ready to, I don't know, catch the ball instead of dropping it.

If they want to win - truly. If they WANT to win. They - the players and coaching staff - need to act like it. They need to execute a good game plan. They need to stop with all the penalties. They need to put the last 9 (or frankly, 30 or so) games out of their minds and beat the opponent in front of them. Let's salvage something from this season while we still can.

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