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Friday, October 31, 2008

Savannah State athletics on the rise

It's homecoming week at Savannah State. For years... The athletic programs have floundered in mediocrity. But with new leadership from President Dr. Earl Yarbrough and athletic director Bart Bellairs... There is hope for the future. "There have been some amazing things happen," said Bellairs. "The transformation of this campus is just beautiful."

The Savannah State athletic department is trying to pull itself out of the hole that was created by years of neglect. If nothing else, Bellairs can feel the excitement of growth. "Our football staff works tremendously hard at getting good. The players are feeling it, the campus is feeling it."

Basketball is just around the corner and Coach Horace Broadnax had helped the team gain respectability. "We're very excited. We just signed a deal with Georgetown that we'll go to Georgetown in men's basketball and they will come back in here the following year," said Bellairs. "Our women's team is already playing a huge schedule, they've got Georgia Tech coming in. We're hoping that everyone will get behind Savannah State athletics as we try to improve our competition and we have our quest to win championships."

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Monday, October 27, 2008

'Cats take over WSSU homecoming

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- It took a little more than nine minutes for Bethune-Cookman to turn a tightly contested Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference game against Winston-Salem State into a blowout. B-CU delivered the knock-out punch in the fourth quarter, and the result was a 27-6 victory at Bowman-Gray Stadium on Saturday. The Wildcats left town with the added satisfaction of knowing they put a serious damper on WSSU's homecoming celebration.

"We really wanted to flip the script, and that's just what we did," B-CU coach Alvin Wyatt said. "Last year, we were 2-4 and we lost to them and fell to 2-5. This year, we come in and beat them, and now we're 5-2 for the first time in three years. "We made some adjustments with our blocking schemes, and that helped open things up when we ran the option (in the second half)."

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http://extras.journalnow.com/photogallery/2008/wssu_homecoming_102608/slideshow.html

Coach Rags starts N.C. A&T four-game season with a bang

GREENSBORO, N.C. -- George Ragsdale walked onto the field early Saturday wearing a floppy rain hat and a rumpled look. He looked like he'd been doing it all his life, and he had in a sense. Ragsdale looked like he was part of the furniture at Aggie Stadium. The soft rain shrouded the field like gauze, making for a gloomy ambience for the first game of the rest of the season for N.C. A&T. Ragsdale was smiling.

A&T held off Howard 21-20 Saturday afternoon to win its first conference game in three years and set off a wild celebration among players and fans and one happy interim coach. "Coach Rags didn't play a down," he said. "Not one down did coach Ragsdale play. What I did was try to motivate and encourage them to play every down."

He meant the players and the fans and the alumni and everyone else who walked into the stadium unsure of what was about to happen. As it turned out, they needed everybody and every down to win the kind of game A&T has been losing for the past three seasons. The game came at the end of a long week for the Aggies and at the beginning of what Ragsdale and the athletics community here declared the beginning of a brand-new, four-game season. Lee Fobbs, the third-year head coach at A&T, was fired Monday morning after the worst era in school history. He was fired after six straight losses, a losing streak that gave him a three-year record of 2-28 that demoralized the team and its fans.

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TSU can't pull out another close one

Tigers fall in OT at SE Missouri

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. — Tennessee State's penchant for living dangerously proved costly Saturday afternoon. The Tigers were knocked from their status as the last team in the Ohio Valley Conference without a league loss Saturday, falling 27-20 to Southeast Missouri State in overtime. The Redhawks rallied from a 14-point deficit, answered TSU's go-ahead field goal with 29 seconds to play, then scored on the first series in overtime.

"We just had too many missed opportunities today," TSU Coach James Webster said. "We should have been able to put them away. "Interceptions hurt us. They really did. We would be moving the ball and have an interception." Senior Antonio Heffner, the OVC's leading passer, threw three interceptions while completing 14 of 22 passes for 233 yards for the Tigers, who came into the game ranked No. 19 in three different Football Championship Series polls.

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Sunday, October 26, 2008

Record crowd 69,113 watches win, AAMU 17, ASU 16

Photo Gallery:
ASU loses the Magic City Classic

AAMU Bulldogs' Jones savors 4th-straight Magic City Classic triumph

BIRMINGHAM, AL - Even Alabama A&M coach Anthony Jones was impressed with the crowd at Saturday's 67th annual Magic City Classic. An announced crowd of 69,113 piled into Legion Field to watch A&M outlast Alabama State 17-16. When I heard the crowd of 69,000 and some change, it blew me away," Jones said. "Both teams are in down years (but) the people in Birmingham know, the people at Alabama State know (and) the people at Alabama A&M know. They know when you line up at the Magic City Classic something magical is going to happen.

"And, if you miss it ... somebody is going to do something they haven't done all year long and for someone to have to tell you about it isn't the same. You can't beat this. It's great to be a part of this. Next year, you're going to have people scaling the wall in Spider-Man suits on trying to get in." Jones became the first Alabama A&M coach since the legendary Louis Crews to win four straight Magic City Classics. Crews' Bulldogs won four straight from 1972-75. "I had no idea," Jones said. "Any time your name can be mentioned with Louis Crews, it's humbling. It's just another example of how blessed I am.

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Prairie View erases deficit, beats Southern 24-23

Photo Gallery: PVAMU 24, SU 23

After watching his offense scuffle in the first half against Southern, Prairie View A&M coach Henry Frazier III told running back Donald Babers that it was up to him to carry the load in the second half. Babers rushed for 102 of his game-high 116 yards in the second half, quarterback Mark Spivey threw for a touchdown and ran for another and linebacker Zach East returned an interception for a score to help the Panthers turn a 14-point deficit into a 24-23 victory in front of a crowd of 19,514 at Reliant Stadium.

With Babers as the primary catalyst, Prairie View outscored Southern 21-6 in the second half. “Coach told me that he was going to put the team on my back, and I was up for the challenge,” Babers said. The Panthers improved to 7-1, their best start since 1964. More importantly, they improved to 4-1 in Southwestern Athletic Conference play, keeping alive their hopes of winning the West Division title and advancing on to the SWAC championship game.

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UAPB Coleman finally gets to celebrate

PINE BLUFF, AR — Arkansas-Pine Bluff Coach Monte Coleman is an emotional guy, and he had trouble holding it in Saturday. Coleman earned his first victory as a head coach as UAPB beat Lincoln University of Missouri 42-0 before a homecoming crowd of 14,852 at Golden Lion Stadium in Pine Bluff. UAPB (1-7) had 394 yards of total offense and held Lincoln (2-6 ), an NCAA Division II school from Jefferson City, Mo., to seven first downs and 181 yards of offense.

“I’m not looking at their record or what division they’re in. We got beat early on by some Division II schools. It’s all relative,” Coleman said. “We needed a victory, and we came out and got us a victory.” Martell Mallett had 146 yards rushing and 2 touchdowns on 15 carries to lead UAPB. Mickey Dean, Jeremy Morrow and Kenneth Esaw also had rushing touchdowns. The sixth touchdown of the day, doubling UAPB’s total from the entire season, came on a 91-yard interception return by James Harrell with 59 seconds left.

UAPB M4 - "Grateful" 10/24/2008 BOTB

UAPB M4 - "A Heart Is A House For Love" 10/24/2008 BOTB

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