In 2022 and 2023, Lake Charles College Prep made solid playoff runs despite what outwardly looked like a subpar regular-season record. The Trailblazers are out again to prove that records aren’t everything.

“You don’t need to look at the records because records don’t tell the story about a football team,” LCCP head coach Erick Franklin Sr. said.

In 2022 and 2023, the Trailblazers entered the postseason with a losing record. They went on to reach the regional round in 2022 and the quarterfinals in 2023, stunning Catholic-New Iberia in the regional round.

The Trailblazers (5-5) enter this postseason without a winning record for a third consecutive season. They made a run to the quarterfinals in 2023 and regionals in 2022 after back-to-back 4-6 regular seasons.

No. 9 LCCP will host No. 24 McKinley (3-7) at 6 p.m. Thursday in the first round of the playoffs.

Franklin said the Trailblazers are on better footing this year compared to the previous two seasons. In 2022 they went into the playoffs on a four-game losing streak and won one game in the second half of last season. This time LCCP has a four-game win streak that allowed it to jump nine spots in the power ratings in the closing weeks of the regular season.

“We had to pull it out, man,” Franklin said. “(We have) a veteran team (that) understands what exactly we need to get accomplished.

“When we’re 1-5 we had to win the next four to put us in a good position for our seed.”

LCCP’s schedule included four ranked teams, and it frequently trailed by a touchdown in the fourth quarter.

“We were within 10 points of Opelousas, within 10 points of Westgate, and in both of those games in the fourth quarter we were down by seven,” Franklin said. “So we were in those games.

“Against Barbe, we had the ball at the 5-yard line and didn’t score to win the game. So I think that’s the difference with this team and the previous years; this team has played hard and is battle-tested.”

Franklin took a more detailed approach to get his team out of their early season slump when frequent turnovers hampered them in otherwise close games. They had a combined 16 turnovers in back-to-back losses to Catholic-New Iberia and Jennings, No. 2 in the Louisiana Sports Writers Association poll.

“For all of the weeks we were losing, a lot of those games was off turnovers,” Franklin said. “You can’t win any games like that.

“We had the boys pay attention to detail more in practice. It’s one of those things, coaches really can’t really do anything about it. We can’t play the game, so we can’t make them hold the ball. We just have to put an emphasis on preparation and details, and that’s kind of what we did.”

Sophomore quarterback Dylan Vital leads Southwest Louisiana with 2,274 yards and 21 touchdowns and two receivers have 800 yards each in Ayden Carter (50 rec., 879 yds., 7 TDs) and Alijah Pete (47-809, 10 TDs).

The defense has also improved, allowing 10 points a game over the last four weeks compared to 36.3 in the first six weeks. Brenden Malveaux leads the Trailblazers with 95 tackles.

“The defense just got better,” Franklin said. “We haven’t changed many things. We run the same defense we have all year. They are a little bit older now and they got more reps as the year went on. We are playing really good ball.”