SU pass defense to get test

Baton Rouge, LA - Although Southern’s pass defense has been relatively solid through two games - opposing quarterbacks have completed only 45 percent of their throws - second-year coach Stump Mitchell said he’s still looking for more big plays from his secondary.

More to the point: When the Jaguars (1-1, 1-0 Southwestern Athletic Conference) face Jackson State (2-0, 0-0) at 6 p.m. Saturday in A.W. Mumford Stadium, Mitchell would love to see some interceptions. During a 21-6 victory over Alabama A&M last week, SU had 11 pass breakups, but no interceptions.

The Jaguars are, in fact, still searching for their first takeaway this season.

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SU defense gets rid of bad taste

Baton Rouge, LA - It was a collaborative effort Saturday night as Southern University vanquished its seven-game losing streak with a 21-6 win over Southwestern Athletic Conference rival Alabama A&M.

The Southern offense scored two pacesetting touchdowns in the first 7 minutes, and the Jaguars defense responded with just as much heart.

A week earlier, Southern’s defense surrendered more than 300 yards on the ground as it was manhandled by Tennessee State’s physical offensive line. But the defense showed its resiliency and held the Bulldogs to just 60 yards on the ground.




“We wanted to control the clock, and keep (Alabama A&M) off the field some,” Southern coach Stump Mitchell said of the Jaguars’ approach. “Last week, Tennessee State was just much bigger than us.”


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TSU's offense starts season in high gear; runs over Southern

Nashville, TN - All those offensive woes that plagued Tennessee State last year were a faint memory for the Tigers, who punished Southern in the John Merritt Classic on Saturday night at LP Field. The running game helped TSU coast to a 33-7 victory before a crowd of 25,209.

It was the most decisive win of second-year Coach Rod Reed’s career. After starting 3-2 last year, TSU (1-0) lost its last six games. Southern (0-1) also lost its last six games in 2010. Once TSU’s rushing attack got in gear early in the first quarter it was unstoppable.

TSU had 223 yards rushing at halftime and finished with 324. The Tigers had 512 yards of total offense.

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Tenn. St. revives ground game


NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Southern’s defense was the elixir for many of the problems that plagued Tennessee State’s offense during the second half of last season. TSU struggled after losing starting running back Preston Brown (torn ACL) at midseason last year and lost its last six games.

The ground game got back into gear Saturday night on the way to a 33-7 victory over the Jaguars.
TSU rushed for a whopping 342 yards and scored two of its first three TDs rushing.

“We just really stuck with our game plan,” said TSU running back Trabis Ward. “That was to come off the ball fast, show some toughness and finish. Everybody on this team knew we had to have toughness and everybody made a promise early in the week to do their job and that’s what it took for the running game to have the kind of success we had.”

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TSU, Southern bank on rushing

Nashville, TN - The unknown factor is usually prominent in the first game of the season. But that’s not the case for Tennessee State and Southern, which meet tonight in the 13th annual John Merritt Classic at LP Field.

Southern’s second-year Coach Stump Mitchell was a running back in the NFL with the St. Louis/Phoenix Cardinals from 1981-89. TSU’s second-year Coach Rod Reed was a linebacker (1985-88), who became the Tigers’ all-time leading tackler (406). That kind of takes the guesswork out of what to expect.



“I don’t think there’s any question about how this game will play out,” Mitchell said. “I’m a running back, and I’m calling the plays. Rod’s a linebacker, and they’re going to try to stop the run. They play good defense, but we have to find ways to run the ball. We didn’t run the ball last year, but we’re going to this year.”

Mitchell said the personnel he inherited at Southern wasn’t suited to run the ball when he left the Washington Redskins as running-backs coach after the 2009 season.

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KEYS: A leader emerges at Southern

Baton Rouge, LA - Stunned beyond belief.

That’s how the Southern football coaches felt. It was Friday night, some eight days before the Jaguars’ season opener Saturday in Nashville, Tenn., against Tennessee State. The campus had emptied out. Most students were headed home, fast asleep or out on the town.

At 10 p.m., SU coaches were milling about the A.W. Mumford Field House, preparing for a scrimmage. There, they stumbled upon Jamie Payton and 10 of his fellow linebackers, who’d stayed late to watch more film.

“Unbelievable,” defensive coordinator O’Neill Gilbert said. “Friday night, after a hard practice, most guys want to go eat pizza and do whatever college kids do. Friday night, they were up here with Jamie Payton.”

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Joseph, SU Jaguars feel mood shifting

Baton Rouge, LA - Dray Joseph said he doesn’t know exactly when the mood of a football team begins to shift. But at some point, he said, everyone knows. At some point, the atmosphere changes. Everyone can sense it.

At Southern University, it changed sometime late last week, when the Jaguars turned away from the monotony of preseason. The anxiousness of game week took over.



In a few days, the Jaguars will pack for their trip to Nashville, Tenn., where they’ll break the seal on a new season. At 6 p.m. Saturday, they face Tennessee State, more than ready to prove they’re back on the path toward respectability.

Training camp shrinks in the rear-view mirror. LP Field, site of the opener, is coming into focus. It’s here. It’s time.

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Southern's coaches working on details for game day

Baton Rouge, LA - The Southern football team held its final preseason scrimmage Saturday inside A.W. Mumford Stadium, and as head coach Stump Mitchell said, it wasn’t your typical take-it-easy dress rehearsal.

Unlike last season, when starters barely participated with one week to go before the season opener, this year’s final rehearsal was more comprehensive, for two major reasons: 1) the team needed a little extra work, and 2) during the regular season, Southern must take Sunday and Monday off because of NCAA-mandated practice limitations.

As it turned out, Southern’s coaching staff also had a few things to work on during Saturday’s scrimmage, as well. Mitchell said he’ll have four assistant coaches in the LP Field press box at 6 p.m. Saturday, when the Jaguars face Tennessee State. They are...

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Dress rehearsals over, SU season approaches

Baton Rouge, LA - With one week to go before college football’s grand opening, a small parade of RVs, trucks and smiling fans littered the parking lots around A.W. Mumford Stadium, anxious for a sneak peek at Stump Mitchell’s team.

They grilled. They ate. They laughed. They collected autographs from Mitchell and his players. And they watched Southern run through its final preseason scrimmage, hoping the Jaguars are prepared to turn a corner at last. But of all the sights and sounds from Saturday’s affair, the most appealing moment may have came after the scrimmage ended.

That’s when four players — quarterback Dray Joseph, tackle Chris Browne, center Lee Almanza and receiver LaQuinton Evans — strolled out of the locker room like supersized models on a grassy catwalk, each of them dressed in Southern’s new Columbia blue uniforms. It is, of course, a return to the school’s original color scheme.



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Southern secondary seeks return to form

Baton Rouge, LA - Through a long winter, offseason workouts and spring practice, through summer conditioning and preseason camp, Levi Jackson couldn’t get one memory out of his head. Jackson, now a junior free safety at Southern, kept recalling the team’s heartbreaking 49-45 loss at Jackson State.

Everyone remembers how the Jaguars allowed JSU to score the game-winning touchdown with 2 seconds left. That was bad enough. But Jackson kept going back to another play. It came in the first half, when JSU went for broke on fourth-and-10, and quarterback Casey Therriault fired a 22-yard touchdown pass to wideout Marcellos Wilder.

If Jackson had stopped that play, he said, Southern could have saved itself from that last-minute meltdown.

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Southern volleyball team emphasizing defense

Baton Rouge, LA - Nathaniel Denu’s message to his Southern volleyball team was quite simple after a second-round exit from last year’s Southwestern Athletic Conference tournament: Defensive prowess will determine the success of the 2011 season.

Passing and setting drills were pushed aside this summer as communication, footwork and technique became the focal point of the Lady Jaguars’ preseason preparation.

A barometer of the team’s progress arrives Friday when Southern opens the season in El Paso, Texas, at the El Paso Sports Commission Invitational. Southern will open the tournament with Friday matches against Texas-El Paso and Texas-Arlington before facing Nicholls State and Portland State on Saturday.

Denu hopes his team can reap early benefits from the extra attention to ...

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Southern Jaguars rich in receivers

Baton Rouge, LA - Jorge Baez grew up in Little Havana, the historically rich neighborhood just west of Miami, which, among many other things, was home to the old Orange Bowl. The old Orange Bowl, of course, was home of the Miami Hurricanes.

When Baez was growing up, the ’Canes were really the ’Canes: the meanest guys on the block, winners of 58 straight home games, teams that practically made national championships a yearly routine.

They were Baez’s first heroes. And the Orange Bowl, may it rest in peace, was the most special place to watch college football. “I grew up running in there and watching them ’Canes play,” Baez said.  He was hooked.

“I kind of knew at an early age that, once I graduated from college, that’s what I wanted to do,” said Baez, now in his first season as the wide receivers coach at Southern University.

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SU offense, defense almost even

Baton Rouge, LA - They couldn’t wait. Yes, as usual, it was a virtual steam bath Saturday at Southern University, with a heat index that crept into the 100s. Yes, the football team was still two weeks away from its Sept. 3 season opener in Nashville, Tenn., against Tennessee State. Yes, it’s often hard to make heads or tails out of one simple dress rehearsal.

Despite all that, a few hundred die-hard fans lined the practice fields Saturday for Southern’s second preseason scrimmage, clamoring for an early glimpse of Stump Mitchell’s team. What did they see? How much, exactly, have the Jaguars improved from last year’s 2-9 mess?

Was the offense ahead of the defense Saturday? Or was it the other way around? Call it a draw. Maybe.

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Long road ahead for Southern Jaguars

Coach Stump Mitchell

Baton Rouge, LA - A year ago at this time, Southern University second-year coach Stump Mitchell made the bold preseason prediction the Jaguars could go 12-0, nabbing a Southwestern Athletic Conference Championship and possibly a Black College National Championship.

Mitchell's hopes for a stellar inaugural season on the Bluff, however, never came to fruition. Instead, the former NFL running back coached SU to a 2-9 record, its worst season in school history. Since then, Mitchell and his coaching staff only have asked for one thing: change. And, as Mitchell says, it starts with him.

As the 2011 season approaches, there have been no such statements. No predictions. Only hard work.

"We look different academically. We look different in terms of the attitude of players. We're just a whole new team," Mitchell said. "This year our guys understand no one can stay pat and expect to retain their position. Same thing with me. I can't stay pat and expect to maintain my job. That's just the way life is, and everyone is doing things in order ...

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KEYS: First four games not easy for Southern University

Baton Rouge, LA - Reciting them from memory, one by one, Southern University football coach Stump Mitchell listed the first four games of this year’s schedule, barely stopping long enough to blink. “After that, I don’t know,” he said. You’ll have to forgive the man for not looking too far ahead.

Mitchell’s pivotal second season at SU could hinge on how well the Jaguars navigate their way through a rock ‘em-sock ‘em September schedule, which goes like this: Tennessee State, Alabama A&M, Jackson State and Florida A&M. No fluff. No filler. No breaks.

If the Jaguars somehow thrive in those first four games, they’re in for a great year.If not ... well, remember how last season went?

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Southern University linebacker corps deeper this year

Baton Rouge, LA - Now in his fifth season at Southern University, senior linebacker Corey Ray knows the drill. He’s used to it. Every preseason, he said, players and coaches naturally believe they’ll be better than they were the year before.

“We said the same thing during camp last year,” Ray said. Of course, they weren’t better.

The Jaguars went 2-9 in their first season under Stump Mitchell, and the linebackers had their share of disappointing moments. All too often, in crucial third-down situations, SU linebackers blew assignments, missed tackles or did both at the same time. As a result, opponents had 58 third-down conversions last season, forcing Southern’s defense to stay on the field and wear down in the second half.

So why, then, will this season really be...



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Southern Linebackers at a glance
LINEBACKERS

POSITION COACH: O’Neill Gilbert.

PROJECTED STARTERS: Demetrius Bentley, Corey Ray, Jamie Payton, Corry Roy.

ON THE BENCH: Franchot West, Jared Detrick, Javandon Vallare, Robert Sanchez, Larry Johnson, Christian Allen, Daniel Brown.

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Southern University has ‘Virgil Island’

Baton Rouge, LA - Before preseason camp began at Southern, coach Stump Mitchell said fans could expect “big things” this season from a smallish player — 5-foot-9 cornerback Virgil Williams.
Mitchell and his staff believed the sophomore could cement his spot as the team’s No. 1 cornerback.

Twelve days have passed since camp began, Williams has done nothing to deter his coaches’ faith.
“He’s a guy that played all three positions last year. He was a corner, a nickel and a safety for us last year,” defensive coordinator O’Neill Gilbert said Sunday at the team’s media day. “We’ve settled him down as a corner, and we expect a big year out of Virgil.”



As a true freshman last season, Williams actually went through preseason camp as a...

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Baez finds home at SU

Baton Rouge, LA - Sometimes, when universities feel an economic crunch, or when they’re in the mood to de-emphasize athletics on campus, they’ll consider a move to drop football. And sometimes, the academic folks win. They drop football.

Jorge Baez and Jamie Payton faced a very different, very rare problem. They arrived at Southern this season after their previous university closed down. Not the football program. The entire school.



In the spring of 2010, Baez was the wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator at Lambuth University, a private NAIA school in Jackson, Tenn., that was founded in 1843. Payton, a graduate of Dutchtown High, was a productive linebacker. Lambuth had been around for more than 150 years, but Baez and others had begun to see signs of trouble. Big signs.

The school was running out of money.

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Southern scrimmage ‘lovely’ for Mitchell

Baton Rouge, LA - This, Stump Mitchell concluded, was downright lovely. On another long summer afternoon, after the Southern football team finished its first preseason scrimmage Saturday - it lasted 2 hours, 12 minutes and 110 plays in hot, steamy conditions - Mitchell, the second-year coach called his team together on the practice field near A.W. Mumford Stadium, then openly praised his players’ effort.

No, the Jaguars are not perfect or polished, he said. But preseason camp is moving along well.

“Lovely,” he said. “I mean, people are out here watching us practice in the heat. Guys are going hard at it. And I think that as a football team, we’re better. ... We’re much further along than we were last year at this time.”

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OG Brown moved to first team

When two of Southern’s top offensive linemen missed preseason practice with minor injuries last week, freshman guard Zach Brown got an instant promotion to the first team. So far, coach Stump Mitchell said, Brown has made the most of his opportunity.

“No question,” Mitchell said. “Zach Brown was here all offseason. He was in summer school. He made two As and one B in nine hours. So he did a fantastic job there, and he’s doing a fantastic job now, stepping in for some injured guys.”

Brown’s promotion came when sophomore left guard Taylon Jones suffered a minor wrist injury and missed several practice sessions last week. Though Jones returned in time to play in Saturday’s first preseason scrimmage, Brown, a 6-foot-4, 290-pound Houston native, played mostly with the first team.

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Revisiting a legendary great! SU Human Jukebox Band Director Dr. Isaac Greggs

Extreme makeover?

OFFENSE BY POSITION

QUARTERBACK

RETURNEES: Dray Joseph, Jeremiah McGinty, Hasoni Alfred, Reid Sanders.

KEY LOSS: None.

TOP NEWCOMERS: J.P. Douglas.

PROJECTED STARTER: Joseph.

OUTLOOK: McGinty was the starter for much of last season, but Joseph came off the bench to lead Southern in both of its wins, and he also started three of the last four games. Joseph began training camp as the de facto No. 1, and while SU coach Stump Mitchell is high on Douglas, a true freshman, it appears that Joseph still has the edge. “Right now, I think he really has a pretty good grasp of the offense,” Mitchell said.

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Southern’s Rice finally getting his chance

Baton Rouge, LA - Even these days, after the Southern football team finishes off a long practice in gruesome conditions, Brandon Rice often bounces through the hallways of the A.W. Mumford Field House with an ear-to-ear grin.

No relief from the heat? No relief from preseason camp? No end in sight to team meetings and film sessions? No problem. At least, that’s the kind of attitude teammates often see from Rice.

At any moment, the junior tailback has a few things on display: his long dreadlocks, his length-of-the-arm tattoos, and an intimate knowledge of the Jaguars’ playbook. Not to mention that ear-to-ear grin.  Plenty are the times when Rice has a joke or a compliment for someone in the room.

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Scott Ferrell: LSU needs to keep the money in state

Baton Rouge, LA - LSU completed its 2012 non-conference football schedule this week with the addition of Towson University. Towson University? Really?

Southeastern Conference schools have historically lined up punching bags for games outside of the conference. The thought process being the eight SEC games are difficult enough. SEC schools have little desire to add four more tough ones.

That thought process is debatable. What shouldn't be debatable is that Towson has no business taking one of LSU's four out-of-conference dates in 2012.

In the past, LSU has done an admirable job of playing in-state competition. After years of only playing Tulane in state, LSU has opened up its stadium and coffers to Louisiana Tech, UL-Lafayette and UL-Monroe. Last year, LSU dropped down to play Football Championship Subdivision member McNeese State. The Tigers will play FCS member Northwestern State this year.

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NOTE: We agree with Scott Ferrell... We have nothing against Towson University, which was 1-10 last season, but why pay $510,000 to an out-of-state program when you can create a great payday for FCS programs Grambling State or Southern University that the Tigers have never played in football? Why should Southern have to travel to New Mexico or Georgia to get a "money game" when LSU sits right across Baton Rouge with a fat checkbook ready to pay other perennial doormats a half-million dollars for a guaranteed blowout?  From any angle, Grambling State vs. LSU or Southern vs. LSU is much more entertaining than a Towson vs. LSU game.

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