Box Score
Montgomery, Ala. — Southern was down by six points on the 31-yard line, it was third-and-10, but that didn’t matter because all the Jags had was less than ten seconds left to play in regulation when a pass from the Jag’s senior quarterback Thomas Ricks to junior wide receiver Emile Bryant who was posted on the 7-yard line caught the ball and then broke a tackle to go on and score the game winning touchdown.
“It’s just what I wanted to do,” Bryant said, who finished the game with two catches for 41-yards. “It’s part of my goals that I wanted to accomplish. I just hope that we keep striving forward and fight what we came for, the SWAC championship. I’m just mad we had to fight such a hard battle. I hope that we don’t ever have to go through this again.”
Southern conquered Alabama State 42-41, after coming from behind a 20-point deficit.
“We knew that we had to play a good team for 60 minuets,” Southern head coach Pete Richardson said. “I thought that we made the plays we had to going down the lane because you have two good teams fighting it out.”
Richardson collected his 100th victory as a Jaguar, this is his 12th year coaching at Southern (142-49-1 overall, 16 years).
The game had the SWAC top two offenses matched up against each other. Alabama State (3-1, 2-1 Southwestern Athletic Conference) is ranked fist in the conference with an average of 446.0 yards per game. Southern (3-2 overall, 3-0 SWAC) is ranked second with an average of 425.8 yards per game.
Southern started to battle back in the game with 13:13 left in the fourth quarter Ricks threw a 64-yard pass to junior wide receiver James Vernon which put them at 28-41.
Then sophomore running back Jamaal Huff got in on the action too completing a 55-yard, half-back pass to Ricks to enclose the score at 35-41, with 7:18 to play.
Ricks finished the game 24 of 38 for 407-yards and had five touchdowns. He also led the Jaguars in rushing with 61-yards on six attempts followed by Huff with 26-yards for six attempts.
“We just had to stick to what we planned to do,” Ricks said. “They had a great defense, I can’t take anything from them, I take my hat off. But, you know we just kept plugging, and plugging away, we stuck together and stuck it out.”
Jag’s freshman wide receiver Rogers Taylor stepped up big for Southern by catching a 77-yard pass to score the first touchdown in the game on the first play at 14:37, for his career first touchdown as a Jaguar.
“This is my first time playing in a big atmosphere like this on a collegiate level and it was just wonderful,” Taylor said.
Three Southern receivers had over 100-yards in receptions: Taylor had five catches for 119-yards and one touchdown, junior wide-receiver Antonio Overstreet had five catches for 115-yards, one touchdown and junior wide receiver James Vernon had four catches for 101-yards and two touchdowns.
“It’s a game that you never know until a player gets out there he gets an opportunity to play and those guys did a good job for us,” Richardson said.
Alabama State had two running backs to pass the 100-yard rushing mark, Keldrick Willliams rushed 18 times for 111-yards and Robert Randolph had 13 carries for 104-yards.
“The good thing is that you can’t get it all back at one time you have to gradually go piece by piece at a time and hope that you can climb back in the game, and turn the momentum around,” Richardson said.
The SWAC’s leading rusher Gerald Holmes did not get into the game. Holmes was held out from a bruise to his right shin suffered against South Dakota State.
Alabama State has not beaten Southern since 2000 in Baton Rouge with a 37-33 victory.
Southern will head to Huntsville, Ala. on Saturday at 3 p.m. to take on Alabama A&M University.
