Miles College wins 2015 SIAC Football Championship

MONTGOMERY, Alabama -- Miles head coach Reginald Ruffin has been looking for his team to play a complete game all season long. In the most important game of the season, the Golden Bears finally delivered.

Cedric Poole returned the opening kickoff 90 yards to set up a score, running back Jamarcus Nance ran for a career-high 145 yards and two touchdowns and the defense harassed Albany State quarterback Caleb Edmonds all night en route to a 20-7 victory in the SIAC Championship Game.

The win was the sixth straight for Miles (7-4), which avenged a 29-16 loss to the Golden Rams (6-4) on Oct. 3 and secured the second league title for the Golden Bears and first since 2011.

"We stalled a little bit offensively and our defense bent but they didn't break," said head coach Reginald Ruffin. "We came up with the big plays when we needed to. The resiliency that these guys have. They never gave up and that's so important."



Miles may have received a little help from the officials early in the game. After Miles had taken a 10-0 in the first quarter 20-yard field goal and 2-yard scoring run from Nance, Edmonds broke free down the sideline on the first play of the second quarter and appeared to have scored on a 25-yard run. The officials, though, ruled he was out at the 1-yard line – a yard Albany State would never get.

After three tries to punch it in, the golden Rams settled for a field goal attempt that missed right.

"We feed off the defense. They had a tremendous effort. They just kept stopping them and kept stopping them," Nance said. "Then, they'd come to the sideline and get us up. We just all came together as a team, which was our goal from the very beginning."

Nance would score his second touchdown with 3:46 left in the first half and Miles would go into halftime with a 17-0 lead. This season, though, Miles has coughed up several leads in the second half, something the team did not want to happen Saturday night.

"In first half, we had the right mindset. We were like we have to play 4 quarters," said Nance, who was named the team's most valuable player of the game. "When we went in for halftime, we talked about being patient."



Quarterback David Whipple, who had rushed for more than 100 yards the last three weeks, had only seven yards rushing but threw for 153 yards in the win. He was comfortable feeding the ball to Nance in the second half.

"They went zero most of the first half so we had to throw it," Whipple said. But in the second half, the run game opened up and (Nance) was able to bust some big ones for us and that helped us out."

Albany State got on the board with a 14-yard touchdown pass with 2:41 left in the third quarter when Edmonds found Thomas Smith alone in the end zone. But the Golden Bears defense held Golden Rams in check. Anthony Hardy had a team-high 11 tackles (nine solo) and Braysean Jones was nearly unstoppable at defensive end, recording six tackles, five quarterback hurries, a sack and a forced fumble.

Poole closed the game out with an interception that sealed the deal and started the championship celebration for the Golden Bears, who play next week at Alabama State to close the season.

Jerome Woods contributed to this report

Box Score 

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