Bulldogs set for rematch of last year’s title game

LUTCHER — Lutcher and Notre Dame are certainly no strangers to each other.

Neither are the school’s head football coaches, Lutcher’s Tim Detillier and Notre Dame’s Lewis Cook Jr.

Last year, the Bulldogs met Notre Dame in the Superdome for the Class 3A championship, and Lutcher came away with a hard-fought 15-7 victory.

For Detillier, there was a tremendous amount of joy after the victory, but there was also a bit of sorrow.

“It felt great to win the state championship, but Lewis is a very good friend of mine, and I felt bad that one of us had to lose that game.”

Friday night, Lutcher and Notre Dame will meet again, this time with a trip to the Superdome on the line as the squads square off at Lutcher at 7 p.m. in a state semifinal battle.

Lutcher seemed to struggle at times during the regular season, but that has not been the case this postseason.

The Bulldogs have had three solid outings as they disposed of Independence, Chalmette and St. Charles Catholic.

“We were very inconsistent this season. In the last three regular-season games alone we committed 15 turnovers,” Detillier said. “But we’ve played our best three games of the season since the playoffs started. It took longer than I expected for us to start playing this well, but it seems like we’re peaking at the right time.”

On Friday, Lutcher will not only be meeting a team that is looking for revenge, it will be facing a team that has overwhelmed its first three playoff opponents this year.

Notre Dame opened with a 36-13 trouncing of Landry, went on to defeat Iowa 34-9 and handed Teurlings Catholic a 42-14 loss last week in the quarterfinals.

“Notre Dame is sound fundamentally,” Detillier said. “They’re quick, strong, big and are rich in tradition. Friday’s game will probably come down to which team makes that really big mistake – like a turnover or a really big penalty. In this game, the team that makes that mistake may not be able to recover.”