No matter what else happens for the rest of the season for Southern, just remember: it could always be worse.
It could always look like it did tonight, where the Southern Jags got blown out at home by the Nicholls St. Colonels 51-7. Nicholls could do no wrong today, finding success both through the air and through the ground, while Southern didn’t get anything going in the game until garbage time had already began.
The first quarter of this game could not have gone any worse for the Jags. Nicholls started with the ball and scored a touchdown through the air, not the method that we were expecting the Colonels to be moving the ball. It wasn’t Collin Guggenheim that made the first dent – instead, Pat McQuaide launches a 30 yard touchdown pass to Cade McNees.
This was a common occurrence for the Jags secondary today. In an uncharacteristic performance for both teams, Nicholls was unbelievably efficient through the air. McQuaide was 12/18 for 178 yards and 4 passing touchdowns, with the Colonels WRs gashing the Jags DBs time after time.
That being said, Nicholls was able to win plenty on the ground as well. The -vaunted Jags defense had a hard time tackling today, and Nicholls was able to log 224 yards on the ground. Guggenheim got his, of course – 16 carries for 99 yards and 2 TDs – but it was a true team effort by the Nicholls running back room to produce as much as they did.
As bad as the defense looked for Southern, the offense was even worse. They had 4 turnovers in the first half – a pair of Noah Bodden picks that squandered scoring opportunities, and a pair of fumbles that gave Nicholls short fields. The short fields were especially brutal. It felt like both teams were living in Southern territory to start the game. There was a total of one snap for either team taken behind the Nicholls 40 yard line in the first 14 drives of the game. This combination of an ineffective offense and terrible field position gave Southern their nightmare start, being down 31-0 before they got a first down (which took place early in the 2nd quarter), rendering most of the last 3 quarters of the game little more than garbage time.
As is tradition now for this Southern team, we saw two different quarterbacks today. After Noah Bodden started and played the entire first half, Jalen Woods played almost the entire 2nd half. He was the one to lead Southern to their only dent into the scoreboard this game, as he found Jason Gabriel in the endzone for a touchdown late in the 4th quarter.
Southern falls to 2-3 with this loss and will look to quickly move on from this game to forget as they go to Texas Southern next week to continue conference play. Nicholls improves to 2-3 with the win and will be back on the road next week as they travel to Incarnate Word.
