This Saturday, Southern University will take on Jackson St in the SWAC Championship Game. After a good season where the Jags won the SWAC West, they’ll have their biggest test in the biggest game of the year with a trip to the Celebration Bowl on the line.
The main question on everyone’s mind is this: how much as Southern grown since their first meeting against Jackson St back in week 3, a 33-15 thrashing where Southern started the game down 20-0. However, this Southern team has changed a lot since that game. Coach Graves feel confident in his team’s growth since their first meeting.
They have grown leaps and bounds. Those guys have done a good job of buying into what we’re doing. We’ve moved some people around, and those guys are playing with confidence. People fail to realize that we had one returning starter on offense, so there would always be growing pains.
Southern University Head Coach Terrence Graves
The scary part about this for Southern is that Jackson St has grown a lot since that game too. After losing the next week, Jackson St. rattled off 8 straight wins to go undefeated in conference play. They own the #2 scoring offense and #1 scoring defense in the conference, and have won a lot of their games handily, a stark contrast from this year’s Cardiac Jags. They are especially dominant on the ground, boasting the #1 rushing offense and rushing defense in the SWAC.
They are disruptive up front. They do a good job of stopping the run. You got to pay attention to those things. If you are going to play great defense, you have to stop the run, and they do a good job stopping the run.
Southern University Head Coach Terrence Graves
With that kind of defensive profile, there will be a lot on the plate of starting quarterback Jalen Woods. He is one of the biggest differences in this game from their first meeting, as he didn’t play in their week 3 game at all. Since he took over halfway through the Bethune-Cookman game, he has given the offense a sense of newfound continuity in the last 3 weeks. They’ve done this through a low volume passing attack that has limited the number of mistakes made on offense. However, given how dominant Jackson St has been on the ground, we might see more passes from Woods this week. It’s a role that Woods has been ready for all year, and he’s taking full advantage of the opportunity he has been given.
Even when J Woods wasn’t playing, he prepared like he was the starter.
Southern University WR Chandler Whitfield
The key advantage Southern has on paper is comparing their pass defense to the Jackson St passing attack. Southern is the #1 pass defense in the SWAC, and Jackson St is only middle of the pack through the air on offense. If Southern can make Jackson St one dimensional on offense, it can fundamentally change what this game looks like compared to Jackson St’s other games this season. Unfortunately, there is one key standing in the way of that potential reality. In the 2nd half of the Bayou Classic last week, star safety Herman Brister III (known as Trey) was penalized for targeting on a hit from Julian Lewis that knocked Lewis out of the game. Brister was disqualified from the game because of it, and he is also suspended from the 1st half in this game due to the targeting rules in college football. That’s a tough blow for a Southern team that needs all hands on deck in order to win the SWAC, but Coach Graves is confident in the team’s “next man up mentality.”
Trey is a tremendous football player, but we’ve got some guys on the back end that we got some guys on the back end that have played well all year, and they’ve played together. It isn’t different than if someone else was out, we would plug someone else in.
Southern University Head Coach Terrence Graves
Brister’s incoming reappearance in the 2nd half of this game just furthers one of the biggest keys to Southern winning the SWAC Championship: they have to have a fast start. At the very least, they have to have a better start than they did in their first meeting against Jackson St, which went so poorly that the game was practically over before the end of the 1st quarter. For a team that has treated fast starts like “a foreign language” as Coach Graves described it, showing some kind of pulse in the 1st quarter will be paramount on Saturday. Southern took a step in the right direction last week, scoring their first TD in the 1st quarter all season in the Bayou Classic, but that weakness will have to continue to be mitigated this week.
You can’t fall behind. You have to score when you have opportunities, you can’t give up big plays on defense, and you have to play a solid game.
Southern University Head Coach Terrence Graves
Don’t get behind. Don’t get behind as an offense, don’t get behind the chains, don’t get behind as an offense.
Southern University WR Chandler Whitfield
The SWAC Championship Game will be this Saturday at 1:00 PM in Jackson, Mississippi. You can watch it live on ESPN2.
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