New Louisiana Tech coach Sonny Dykes would like to clear something up right now -- he’s not trying to make Louisiana Tech into Texas Tech.

Although Dykes’ father, Spike, was a legendary head coach at Texas Tech and Dykes is known as a spread offense guru, he said Texas Tech’s system might not be the right one for Louisiana’s Tech’s personnel right away.

“As a coach, you always have this idea of what you want to be and sometimes it goes right along those lines and everything falls into place and all of a sudden you’re exactly what you want to be,” Dykes said. “But most of the time it doesn’t. What we have to do is evaluate what we can do. Figure out what we’re good at, figure out what kind of talent we have.”

Dykes, who did this interview less than 24 hours after accepting the Louisiana Tech job, said he’s done some research on Tech’s current players, but that he won’t know exactly what he’s got until he starts really looking at film and preparing for spring football.

Ideally Dykes, who is replacing Derek Dooley after he left for Tennessee, would like to implement some sort of spread system just to keep up with the rest of the conference's scoring prowess. Six teams in the Western Athletic Conference ranked in the top 17 in the country in total offense this past season, including Nevada. No. 2. Louisiana Tech ranked 64th in total offense with 372.25 yards per game. Several of those games, however, were played with piecemeal lineups full of first-year players to make up for injuries.

Six teams in the conference ranked in the top 50 in the country in scoring offense. The Bulldogs ranked 46th nationally with 29.17 points per game.

“I think this league has always been known as an offensive league and the teams are doing it different ways,” Dykes said. “There are a lot of pretty balanced football teams in this league. The thing is, in college football today, you’ve got to be able to score to give yourself a chance to win. That’s the thing we’re going to have to do. We’re going to have to score points because it’s going to be hard to stop a lot of these teams on offense.”

Dykes inherited a team that was known more for its running game than its passing, but it loses its top rusher Daniel Porter, to graduation. Quarterback Ross Jenkins, a second-year starter, led a passing offense that ranked 91st in the country with just 188.08 yards per game. Jenkins threw for 2,095 yards, but had just four games with more than 200 yards. He did throw 17 touchdowns to just five interceptions.

The one thing Dykes has going for him is that he returns several players with experience. He’s also spending the next couple of weeks securing the recruiting commitments gathered by Dooley’s staff before he left. The class Louisiana Tech has put together is considered its best class of the decade.

Dykes said his hope is to identify the type of offense Louisiana Tech can run with its current personnel and have it all put in by the end of spring practice. He said then he could tweak it into the summer and through fall camp.

“There’s always a transition and it takes a little time,” Dykes said. “A lot of it really depends on our players and who comes through and who doesn’t and where our perceived strengths and weaknesses are. But I think that you are who you are and I’ve always been a spread guy. We’ve done a little bit different stuff at Arizona because we had to. The thing we want to do is change our scheme to fit our personnel, not try to get our players to fit the scheme.”