Stage is Set For Judgment Day 2012
Roscoe Nance
Arkansas-Pine Bluff will be playing for a place in history
as well as its first conference title Saturday when the Golden Lions face Jackson State
in the SWAC Championship Game at Legion Field in Birmingham, Ala.
The Golden Lions (9-2, 8-1 SWAC), champions of the West
Division, will register the first 10-win season in school history with a
victory.
“That’s definitely a carrot that’s in our sights,’’ UAPB
coach Monte Coleman says.
The Golden Lions won nine games in 1994 while playing as an
NAIA independent and again in 2006 when they made their first appearance in the
SWAC Championship game and lost to Alabama A&M. They also had a nine-win season in 1990, but
the NAIA forced the Golden Lions to forfeit those victories because of rules violation
that resulted in the football program receiving the death penalty.
In order for UAPB to surpass those squads’ achievement, they
will have to defeat Jackson
State (7-4, 7-2 SWAC) for
the second time this season. They registered a home victory against the Tigers
Oct. 6, and Coleman acknowledges that coming away with two wins against any
team in the same season is a gargantuan challenge let alone trying to do it
against a team the caliber of Jackson
State.
Even though UAPB defeated Jackson
State 34-24 , Jackson State
dominated the game with 420 yards total offense, including 319 rushing. Running
backs Tommy Gooden (104) and Rakeem Sims (101) and quarterback Clayton Moore
(100) each rushed for at least 100 yards.
.”Jackson
State had a lot of
success against us,’’ Coleman says. “They beat us in almost every statistical
category. They’re familiar with everything we do offensively and defensively.
It is hard to beat a team twice in one year. We have to play the defense that’s
called. A lot of time we wildcatted. We have to make sure we’re sound, play and
don’t try to do anything out of the ordinary and take care of our
responsibilities first as a defensive player then help our teammate. By no
means is that going to shut down them completely. They’re going to make plays.
We realize that. But hopefully that will minimize some of the plays they made
in the first game.’’
UAPB scored 21 points in the second period to break open the
first meeting with Jackson
State.
“They came out with a good design and just beat us,’’ Jackson State coach Rick Comegy says. They took
advantage of any mistakes we made and put points on the board. We just have to
be a better football team. I don’t know if we were a good football team that
day. They beat us outright. They were a better team that day,
That loss left Jackson
State on the brink of
elimination from the East Division race with a 2-4 record that included a
conference loss two weeks earlier to Southern, which had been winless.
“We were down, ‘’ Comegy says. “We were wondering what was
wrong. We thought we had a pretty good football team, but things weren’t going
our way. The lost to Southern had us thinking, ‘Who are we.’ We rolled our
sleeves up and went back to the basics.’’
The Tigers regrouped and finished the season by winning
their final five games and tied Alabama
State for first place in
the East. They claimed the championship on the strength of their 37-34 victory
against the Hornets. The Tigers’ win streak coincided with their decision to
have a more balanced offense by running the ball more.
“We closed the door on that first chapter (of the season)
and started a new chapter,’’ Comegy. “I always thought we had backs who could
run. But sometime when you’re coming of a season and you had a great
quarterback like we had in (All-American) Casey (Therriault, the 2011 Black
College Football Offensive Player of the Year), you want to repeat that
scenario. You can’t do that Casey has had his day. We have to go with what we
do best. We can throw. But yet and still we had a couple of guys who run the
ball but we weren’t using them that much. It turned out our running game wasn’t
that bad.’’
Jackson
State ended the season
No. 3 in the conference in rushing offense, averaging 186.7 yards a game. Three
Tigers were among the top10 rushers. Sims was No. 5 with 714 yards; Moore was No. 8 with 564,
and Gooden was No. 7 with 548. The Tigers also averaged 219.8 passing yards a
game, third-best in the conference.
Senior wide receiver Rico Richardson, the 2012 SWAC
Offensive Player of the Year, is the big-play weapon in Jackson State’s
offense. Richardson
caught 56 passes for 1,081 yards and 10 touchdowns. Richardson’s 19.3 yards per catch average was
second-best among receiver in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) with
at least 50 receptions.
“Every play you have to understand and realize that he has
very good running ability,’’ Coleman says. “We have to make sure we take care
of our business when he’s in the game.’’
Arkansas-Pine Bluff’s defense was in the top three in the
conference in fewest rushing yards allowed per game (141.2), fewest total yards
allowed per game (307.7), fewest passing yards allowed per game (166.5) and
fewest points allowed per game (18.3). Senior defensive end Brandon Thurmond is
the Golden Lions’ leader. Thurmond, the 2012 SWAC Defensive Player of the Year,
led the FCS with 15.5 sacks.
Jackson
State held Thurmond to
just one sack in the teams’ regular season game.
“Brandon Thurmond is an outstanding football player,’’
Comegy says. “He knows how to get to the quarterback. He has that knack. He’s a
guy you have to reckon with. We have to get around the heat he brings. He’s a
guy you have to look to double team and put some people on because he can
really bring it.’’
Like Jackson
State, UAPB boasts a
balanced offense. With All-SWAC quarterback at the controls, the Golden Lions
led the conference with 204.7 rushing yards a game and they threw for 196.7.
Running back Justin Billings is the big gun in the ground game. Billings rushed for 768
yards while averaging 6.0 yards a carry. Dennis Jenkins, his backup, rushed for
539 yards.
Penalties on both sides of the ball were a major problem for
UAPB all season. They were the third-most penalized team in the conference,
having been flagged 116 times and losing an average of 90.4 yards a game
because of penalties. They were guilty of 17 penalties that cost 172 yards –
both conference highs – in their victory against Alabama State,
and they were penalized nine times for 83 in their season finale against Prairie
View A&M. However, they were only penalized four times for 25 yards in
their victory against Jackson
State, and Coleman hopes
for a repeat of that performance.
“We’re still getting way too many penalties,’’ Coleman
says. “Only by the grace of God have we been able to be hit with the number of
penalties that we have had and still come out with a victory. Penalties are a
major concern. We have to play an almost
perfect game to beat Jackson
state, and penalties would be a negative for us.’’