It was a made-for-TV performance of historic proportions produced Saturday at Oliver C. Dawson Stadium by South Carolina State.
Playing in front of the fourth-largest audience in stadium history and the omnipresent cameras of ESPNU, which taped the game for airing later in the evening, the Bulldogs once again shined before a national audience in routing Florida A&M 49-14.
The win before 21,525 fans was a school-record fifth straight in the series for the Bulldogs (3-3, 2-1). It was the eighth-straight victory at Oliver C. Dawson Stadium and improved SCSU's record to 13-0 in nationally-televised games.
"We had a chance to finally get our offense going, just generally get some confidence," SCSU Oliver 'Buddy' Pough said. "You score (63) points in six ball games, there's not a whole lot going on for you. I'm excited as I can be about our performance today because it looks like we hit on something. I'm just happy for what happened today."
Just as important for SCSU's confidence was seeing the offense break out of its season-long slump by amassing the most single-game yards posted against the Rattlers (2-4, 1-2) in their 101-year history. Quarterback Cleveland McCoy had another stellar performance before the bright lights by accounting for more than half of the Bulldogs' 611 yards of offense and leading them on five-straight scoring drives.
The Baptist Hill graduate threw for a season-high 178 yards and two touchdowns on 14 of 19 passing. He also rushed for 136 of the team's 405 yards, one of three Bulldogs to surpass the century mark on the ground."We came out with a more offensive attack," McCoy said. "The offensive coordinator (Joe Blackwell), Coach Pough, he sat me down. We sat down as an offensive unit and came out with some great ideas this week."
Will Ford led the way with 142 yards, 131 coming in the first half, and a touchdown and also caught three passes for 39 yards and a touchdown. Meanwhile, his backfield mates had career days as backup tailback Jonathan Woods rushed for 126 yards and a touchdown, and senior fullback Evans "Boo" Capers had the first three carries of his collegiate tenure which all went for touchdowns.
"We had more of a sense of urgency," Capers said. "We had a harder practice. On Tuesday, we came out flying around. Everybody came out like they should and everything just came together today. The players were rolling. All the guys were rolling. The o-line did their best. That's all you can ask for. All you're going to get is positive results when everybody thinks positive, be positive and get positive results."
So dominant was the Bulldogs' effort that it allowed freshman Malcolm Long to see his first significant action. The former South Carolina "Mr. Football" played most of the second half and completed 4 of 8 passes for 28 yards.
Meanwhile, his Gaffney teammate and fellow freshman, linebacker Julius Wilkerson, took advantage of his extended playing time with a team-high six tackles for an SCSU defense which collected three turnovers, two on interceptions by Markee Hamlin, and held FAMU to 198 total yards.
"Mistakes killed us today," said FAMU head coach Rubin Carter, who's now 0-3 against SCSU. "Take nothing away from South Carolina State, but we dug ourselves a big hole early on offense and didn't recover."
After opening the game with two unproductive drives, the floodgates began to open for the SCSU offense. A 48-yard run by Ford brought SCSU into Rattler territory, followed by a 11-yard reception by Young from McCoy that moved to the FAMU 13. The very next play saw McCoy find a wide open Octavius Darby in the back of the end zone.
An interception by Hamlin with 59 seconds remaining in the first quarter put the Bulldogs in position for its next score. After a 30-yard reception by Young, Woods took the handoff and burst through a huge hole in the Rattler defense untouched for a 29-yard touchdown with 16.7 seconds left.FAMU answered back early in the second quarter with a 1-yard touchdown run by Anthony Edwards to cap a six-play, 85-yard scoring drive aided by 45 yards of SCSU penalty yards.
Following a 35-yard kickoff return by Dusten Dubose, it only took SCSU 70 seconds to respond with three-straight plays to Ford. He had a 3-yard run, then caught a 12-yard pass and finished with a 39-yard scamper through the Rattler defense to extend SCSU's lead to 21-7 with 11:50 remaining in the first half.
Continuing to move the football with near-ease, SCSU drove 87 yards on 10 plays for its next score, a 3-yard touchdown by Capers. He would get the call again 11 seconds before halftime, bulldozing his way in from 2 yards to make it 35-3.
SCSU finished the first half with 402 total yards, 302 coming on the ground, and McCoy was 11 of 13 passing for 100 yards.
"With the offense that we have, 11 guys have to do their job and we had a couple of guys not doing their job," McCoy said. "It's hard because the fans and media don't see it as that and it's rough. But we came in, we got our confidence back and that's the thing we needed."
The scoring onslaught continued for the Bulldogs in the second half. McCoy used his legs and arm to orchestrate an eight-play, 64-yard scoring drive to set up Capers' 2-yard score.
A week after dropping a potential go-ahead touchdown pass, Ford made amends on the Bulldogs' next series. From the FAMU 39, McCoy lofted a pass to a wide-open Ford who made the catch and tip-toed down the sidelines for the touchdown.
FAMU got a 3-yard touchdown pass from backup Eddie Battle to Mykel Benson with 2:26 remaining in the game. The Rattlers subsequently recovered a fumble at the SCSU 16, only to turn the football over on downs which allowed the Bulldogs to run out the clock.
SCSU now turns its attention to next week's critical showdown at Hampton where it has never won. While last season's motto was "Win or Go Home," Pough plans to take a more relaxed approach to this "make or break" contest.
"We're going to go pretty much with this approach I think," he said. "We're not going to try to put any extra pressure on ourselves. We'll go up and have fun and hopefully, we can beat Hampton. If Hampton beats us, we'll get on the bus and get on back home and cry like we usually do and all that kind of stuff. But we'll get over it. But I would like to think, though, that we'll play better because of the fact that we have some confidence that we didn't have going into that game."
BULLDOG NOTES: The most single-game yards amassed by an SCSU team is 682 set in 1980 against Johnson C. Smith. Ironically, Pough was the Bulldogs' defensive coordinator at the time under Bill Davis...The previous record for most yards allowed by Florida A&M was 583 in a 1992 game against Morgan State...The largest crowd for a football game inside Oliver C. Dawson Stadium is 24,577 set in 1999 when SCSU faced Benedict College...Markee Hamlin now has four interceptions on the season, moving one ahead of his older brother Michael, a senior safety at Clemson. The two have a competition going in which the winner has to wear the other brother's jersey at the end of the season...SCSU improved to 39-5 under Pough when leading or trailing at halftime...SCSU was penalized 12 times for 114 yards.
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