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Patience pays off as Grambling holds off Southern
By JOSEPH SCHIEFELBEIN
jschiefelbein@theadvocate.com
Advocate sportswriter
NEW ORLEANS -- Grambling interim coach Melvin Spears found patience, most of all, during a season which, given an array of personnel losses, turned out to be so trying.
That discovery proved to be Grambling's saving grace, allowing the Tigers to finish with a winning season with a 24-13 upset win over 20th-ranked Southern in Bayou Classic XXXI on Saturday in the Superdome.
The same quality, finding patience, allowed Ab Kuuan, who ran for 126 yards, including setting up a field goal with a 32-yard run on a fake punt, and three touchdowns, to go from forgotten man to featured back.
"There are a lot of emotional things," Spears said of the season, with Grambling finishing 6-5 after winning its last two games. "They got down a whole lot, but they kept their faith. We grew from the faith portion of it."
The loss put Southern's bid to repeat as Southwestern Athletic Conference champions in serious peril.
Southern (8-3, 6-1 SWAC), which had won six straight games, needs 19th-ranked Alabama State (8-2, 6-1), which has already won the Eastern Division, to beat Arkansas-Pine Bluff (6-2, 5-1) on Saturday in Montgomery, Ala., to get to the Dec. 11 SWAC Championship Game.
Though both Southern and UAPB can finish as Western Division co-champions, UAPB has the upper hand by going undefeated in divisional play.
"I've just got to give it to Grambling," SU coach Pete Richardson said. "They played hard. They made the plays they had to."
Just like last season's Bayou Classic, there were four lead changes.
Unlike last season, when the teams combined for 1,136 yards in the highest scoring Bayou Classic ever as SU won 44-41, this game was played at a more sedate pace. Saturday's totals were 37 points and 647 yards.
Keeping the game under control was Grambling's goal. And underpinning that quest was Grambling's season high of 279 rushing yards.
"I just thought the fact we had guys that outweighed Southern, certainly it was about time for them to get off their butts and run the football a little bit," Spears said.
The Tigers might have rather passed first if All-American quarterback Bruce Eugene, out since the season opener with a knee injury, was still playing. Instead, Grambling wasn't riding true freshman Brandon Landers, who threw only 13 passes for 72 yards. In contrast, Eugene had touchdown throws of 76 and 71 yards in last year's game.
"We knew they were going to run the football," Richardson said. "They gave the illusion they were going to throw it. But they've got that huge offensive line and they kept beating on us and pounding on us. Those 2 yards became 4. We had a tough time trying to control them."
Grambling has been working on its running game lately, with the once-forgotten Kuuan the focal point, with three straight 100-yard games and two wins to show.
"(Earlier in the season), he just wasn't running the ball like he was last year," Spears said of Kuuan. "The difference in the ballgame today was he showed great patience behind those big offensive linemen."
Kuuan, Grambling's MVP, couldn't sleep Friday night.
"I was dreaming of making plays," Kuuan said. "Thinking about this game sent chills down my spine. I was visualizing making these plays."
Grambling worked primarily out of an I-formation in the first half but went to a Wing-T, the offense Eddie Robinson worked to legendary status, to keep Southern off-balance with extra movement in uncorking a 68-yard drive to start the second half. The Tigers went for it on fourth-and-1 and Kuuan, who had lobbied Spears as SU called time, dashed for an 11-yard TD to put Grambling up 10-6 with 11:31 to play.
And Grambling answered SU's go-ahead score with another efficient, 71-yard match, taking a 17-13 lead with 12:54 to play.
Those drives featured two passes, both on the second march (even though the key play was Landers' 19-yard toss to Clyde Edwards on a third-and-13, Grambling's longest completion).
"We didn't expect them to run that much," Southern linebacker Tarus Morgan said. "It just wasn't our day. We weren't clicking today."
By keeping the ball for a season-high 36 minutes, 21 seconds, the Tigers kept Southern's potent offense off the field.
When tailback Gerald Holmes went out after the first series after re-injuring his right leg, Southern was down to its fourth-string tailback. And with wide receiver James Vernon, back after missing two-and-a-half-games with a knee sprain, still not at full go, SU wasn't as potent passing.
Still, behind quarterback Thomas Ricks, Southern's MVP, throwing for 176 yards and one touchdown and running for another 93, the Jaguars took two leads.
The first came at 6-3 on a 48-yard pass to Emile Bryant that ended the first half and the second came at 13-10 on Devin Herbert's 2-yard run with 2:59 left in the third quarter.
Grambling's ball-control strategy magnified every missed opportunity for Southern, which had a season low in points and went scoreless six times in Grambling territory. Grambling blocked two field-goal tries and Breck Ackley missed an extra point. There was also a failed fourth down at the Grambling 36 and a fumbled punt return at the Grambling 39.
"They really did a good job keeping the ball away from us," Ricks said.
The Jaguars had been comeback kings all season, winning four games with fourth-quarter rallies. This time, though, after driving from its own 4-yard line to the Grambling 23, Southern got no farther. And in the play of the game, Kenneth Pettway blocked Ackley's 43-yard try and Greg Fassitt recovered the ball at the Southern 40-yard line to set up Kuuan's game-icing TD.
That last Kuuan TD kept SU from any more late-game magic. When other teams had been unable to put away SU with eerily similar chances, Grambling did so, with Kuuan's 23-yard run setting up the touchdown, a 2-yard leap with 4:22 to play.
"We just couldn't find any way to win it. We're a battered football team at this time," Richardson said.
Notes
Ricks moved into second place, with 2,342 yards passing this season, in the school's single-season passing mark (behind Quincy Richard's 3,340 yards last season). ... Ricks has also run for 638 yards. Had he not suffered a 10-yard sack in the final minutes, Ricks would have had his fourth straight 100-yard rushing game. ... For the third time this season, SU didn't have a turnover. ... Until Saturday, SU had won 14 straight games outside of A.W. Mumford Stadium.
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