By RYAN ARENA

L’Observateur

LUTCHER – Lutcher’s home field situation is up in the air after a portion of the school’s stadium caught fire early Monday morning.

But Lutcher coach Tim Detillier only hopes that figuring out home field advantage is a problem that he’ll be fortunate enough to deal with a week from Friday.

Disaster or no, Lutcher (10-1) is scheduled to travel to Lafayette to face Teurlings Catholic (8-3) for a Class 4A regional round matchup on Friday.

For home field to come into play at all, Lutcher must win.

“I want it to be a problem to deal with next week. It can’t be one this week,” said Detillier. “What it comes down to is blocking this out of our minds. There’s a lot of distractions, and the rain (Monday) didn’t help matters. It takes some maturity, though, and we had a good practice. We’re coming off of our best performance of the season, so hopefully we can build on that.”

Teurlings Catholic is a stout offensive team. It upset a higher seeded team in Sam Houston, the 20-seed beating the 12-seed 40-25. Such a score is commonplace for the Rebels, who average over 32 points a contest. Teurlings has lost its three games to Notre Dame, Northside and Breaux Bridge, the former two a combined 21-1 this season.

“They boast a lot of speed,” said Detillier. “A real good quarterback, and excellent running back, and a fine wide receiver-slash-running back. We’ll have to account for all of them.”

Teurlings quarterback D’Shaie Landor passed for 1,538 yards and 14 touchdowns while rushing for 408 yards and five touchdowns to lead the Rebel’s spread attack.

For Lutcher, junior running back Daniel Taylor set the school’s career rushing record this season, but has competed through much of it at less than 100-percent.

But Detillier said he was healthy on Friday, and it showed.

Taylor rushed for 186 yards and four touchdowns on just nine carries during Lutcher’s 56-20 rout of Huntington.

“When we had the ball, we did things quickly,” said Detillier. “They won time of possession, but we made our chances count.”

Trevor Englade caught three passes for 59 yards and two scores. Jarvis Landry caught five passes for 86 yards.

Ruston Matherne led Lutcher quarterbacks, completing all four of his passes for 74 yards and two scores.

Detillier had said for much of last week that his team finished the regular season without ever having a complete performance. But that type of game came Friday.

“It came in the nick of time,” said Detillier.

The fire was the second such disaster to strike Lutcher after a fire destroyed the school’s fieldhouse in 2006.

The Bulldogs would rally to win the Class 3A state championship.

Though clearly weary from a long day of dealing with the fire and preparing his team, and speaking with a heavy heart, Detillier still offered a bit of humor.

“Half of Lutcher’s mourning right now, and half are celebrating,” he chuckled. “Because the last time it happened, we won state.”