Grambling splits pair of games against reigning SWAC champ Prairie View

Grambling State began its final conference homestand of the season on Saturday afternoon with a doubleheader split against visiting Prairie View A&M University. Holding a one-run lead in the bottom of the sixth, Grambling’s Brent Smith smacked a three-run homer to propel the Tigers to a 9-5 win in game one.

Prairie View jumped on the scoreboard in the top of the third and led 1-0 but GSU tied the game in the bottom half on a sacrifice fly by Manny Kumar. The Tigers moved ahead 3-1 in the fourth after Prairie View starter Charlie Aceto issued a wild pitch and a bases-loaded walk.

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QUICK SLANTS: Alabama A&M at Grambling State

Photo: GSU DB DeMichael Dizer #29 versus Pittsburgh Panthers

By Nick Deriso, The Monroe News Star

NOT FLASHY, BUT SOLID

First-year Grambling coach Rod Broadway’s style isn’t flashy. In fact, it’s sometimes almost boring.

A sample: “Don’t try to make plays that are not in your area,” Broadway told the team this week. “Take care of your responsibility.”

But that kind of solid, foundation-building approach is finding a home in the Southwestern Athletic Conference, despite the lingering reputation of flamboyant character/coaches like Marino Casem, Archie Cooley and Melvin Spears.

After all, it could be argued that both participants in the most recent SWAC title games (Alabama A&M’s Anthony Jones and Arkansas-Pine Bluff’s Mo Forte) were proponents of this assignment-oriented approach — as are recent championship coaches like Charlie Coe and Pete Richardson.

DON’T MISS IT
When Grambling plays Alabama A&M this Saturday, it will be one of just three home games in 2007, the second consecutive season that’s happened.

Over the past 25 seasons at Robinson Stadium, GSU has held as few as three home games on 10 other occasions.

But it’s not the shortest home slate ever.

Under former coach Doug Williams in 2001, the Tigers played just two games in Grambling — going 2-0 over Alabama A&M and Texas Southern.

GSU then played four home contests in 2002-05.

Still, playing so few times in front of the locals puts additional pressure on the team to perform well, something first-year Grambling coach Rod Broadway is well aware of.

“I’ve heard so much about the atmosphere here,” Broadway said. “I’m excited for our fans and our football team. Hopefully, we can go out and represent the university and the athletic department well.”

Grambling has posted undefeated home records nine times (1983, ’89, ’91, ’93-94, 2000-02, and ’05) since “The Rob” opened in September 1983. Its only winless campaign at the stadium was in 2004.

ENEMY LINES: A&M
Alabama A&M, coming off its first-ever SWAC championship in 2006, returns 13 starters — including dual-threat quarterback Kelcy Luke.

That led preseason league voters to predict a return to the title match, which has also featured A&M in 2000, ’02 and ’05. Each previous time, however, the Bulldogs fell to this week’s foe, Grambling.

“We’ve got some demons to face,” said A&M coach Anthony Jones. “We’ve got to get ourselves ready to face a good football team on the road. (First-year Grambling coach Rod) Broadway has them playing well in all three phases of the game.”

Always a defensive-minded squad, A&M has emerged as a scoring threat in 2006 — averaging a league-leading 45 points a game so far in wins over Tennessee State, Clark-Atlanta and Mississippi Valley.

That’s helped the Bulldogs open a season at 3-0 for the first time since 1966, according to the SWAC.

“They’re the conference champions, and have played in a number of championship games,” Broadway said. “You don’t play in that many conference championship games without doing a good job. It’s going to be a great challenge.”

Freshman Ulysses Banks has run for 314 yards in the past two games alone, while the underappreciated Luke — still largely unknown, despite leading A&M to consecutive nine-win seasons — is throwing for 293 yards a game.

“He’s a leader, and he’s proven to be a winner,” Jones said of Luke. “I’m blessed to have him on our team.”

Grambling holds a 12-4 lead in a series that dates back to 1941. A&M recorded a shutout in that first meeting; Grambling held the Bulldogs scoreless the last time this league game was held at Robinson Stadium, in 2005. There were 44 years between the second and third games of this series, held in 1945 and then ’89. A&M has been an annual opponent since it joined the SWAC in 1998.

“We’re excited to play the conference champions,” Broadway said. “You can never underestimate the heart of a champion. That means they will not give up, and they’ll be there until the last whistle. That’s where we have to get our guys.”

SWAC ATTACK
VIEW FROM SOUTHERN
Once again, Southern had its troubles with Prairie View — though the Jaguars were able to avoid the overtime upset that defined their 2006 season.

The defense overcame a series of offensive mishaps, including as many as six dropped passes, to win 12-2.
“I don’t know if it’s what they did or what we did to ourselves,” Southern coach Pete Richardson said.

Photo: Texas Southern vs. JSU was played in monsoon.

OFF THE SNIDE
Jackson State has finally gotten its first win of the season, besting Texas Southern 28-7 in a rain-soaked contest.

JSU finished 2006 on a 1-4 slide, then opened this year 0-2.

“We needed a win bad,” said coach Rick Comegy. “We haven’t had one in a while. Hopefully that will lead us back to the hopes and dreams we had for the season.”

North Carolina A&T goes to L.A. seeking relief

N.C. A&T, riding a 17-game skid, meets Prairie View A&M, once home to an 80-game losing streak.

By Rob Daniels, Greensboro News-Record

This may be an omen, you know. The N.C. A&T football team is trying to break a 17-game losing streak, and who stands in the Aggies' way? The winner of all losers, of course.

From 1989-98, Prairie View A&M set a record for ineptitude so grand it's nearly twice as long as its nearest, um, competitor: 80 in a row.

When the Aggies and the Panthers face off in the second Angel City Classic Saturday at the Los Angeles Coliseum (5:30 p.m. EDT), A&T will discover it's playing a very reasonable facsimile of a Division I-AA/NCAA FCS football team. It took them a while, but the Panthers, who beat SWAC rival Texas Southern in their opener, can compete.

In retrospect, the Panthers' streak was somewhat understandable. The school didn't have a full-time athletics director until 1998. Immediately before then, the post was held by a full-time professor who doubled as an assistant track coach.

Prairie View (Texas) surpassed Columbia's NCAA mark of 44 consecutive defeats in November 1994 with a 70-20 homecoming loss to Division II Tarleton State, and the Panthers kept on going. But to their credit, they didn't disband the program or even drop in classification.

Eventually, a joint effort of alumni and the supervisory Texas A&M University System helped ease the Panthers into the mainstream. The university voted in 2003 to initiate a student athletics fee of up to $300 per student per academic year. That's not as hefty as A&T's figure of $376, but it provided a start. Prairie View's football spending ranked eighth in the 10-team SWAC in 2005-06, the most recent year for which such records are available.

In 2004, the school hired Henry Frazier III, who had done a reclamation job at Division II Bowie (Md.) State, as its coach. While the Panthers haven't contended for the SWAC title, they did manage three wins a year ago, and Frazier said they were fewer than 10 plays from being 8-2.

That's a common lament of teams that suffer close losses, but it does suggest the Panthers have liberated themselves from the joke rotation of late night talk-show hosts.

A&T doesn't want to get any closer to that level than it already is. The Aggies' string is in a 13th-place tie on the NCAA's list of ignominy, but only three defeats short of fifth. The Aggies just passed Siena, which lost 16 in a row from 1994-96. On the horizon stands Canisius, which suffered 24 consecutive defeats before ending the fourth-longest skid Oct. 13, 2001. The Golden Griffins won at Siena that day. By January 2004, both programs were gone, conveniently sacrificed in the name of cost-cutting.

There's no threat of that at A&T, but the Aggies are undeniably tired of this line of discussion. To stop it, they'll need at least one big special-teams play, a turnover-free afternoon and more consistent blocking than they displayed in last week's season-opening loss at Winston-Salem State. That defeat was still more competitive than any game they played last year.

A crowd of 25,000 is expected for the contest, which is run jointly out of Los Angeles and Texas and which seeks to expose Southern California to Historically Black Colleges and Universities, few of which are west of the Mississippi.