Prairie View is having that feeling of déjà vu all over again.
For the second consecutive season, the Panthers will play a game in the final week of the regular season with a chance to win the SWAC West Division and clinch a trip to the conference championship game.
Prairie View (5-5, 5-2 SWAC) finds itself in this position after a win at Southern last Saturday and Texas Southern’s upset of then-division leader Alcorn State 44-10 in Houston.
All the Panthers have to do is beat an Alabama State team that is riding a five-game winning streak, the second longest in the SWAC behind East champion Florida A&M, to win the SWAC West.
Prairie View was in a similar position last season but surprisingly lost to Mississippi Valley State in the final game of the regular season. Southern then took the SWAC West after knocking off Grambling State in the Bayou Classic.
“We’re going into this game to win it,” Panthers coach Bubba McDowell said earlier this week. “We talked about it all season long. We have an opportunity to do something great. I tell the kids all the time don’t let people take away your opportunity.”
If Prairie View somehow loses to Alabama State, it sets up another wild scenario to determine a division champion.
Alcorn State (6-4, 5-2) can win the SWAC West with a Prairie View loss and a win at 7-win Jackson State.
Grambling State (5-5, 4-3), which had seemingly fallen out of the division picture after its loss to Alcorn State two weeks ago, can grab the top spot if both Alcorn State and Prairie View lose and the Tigers win over Southern in the post-Thanksgiving Bayou Classic. Grambling owns the tiebreaker against Prairie View.
“We’re not even looking at the loss part of it,” McDowell said. “I told them we have an opportunity to do something good at the university and cement your legacy. This is the opportunity. It has to start this week.”
