South Alabama’s Fast Start Leads To 31-13 Win Over Arkansas State
The South Alabama Jaguars got their third-consecutive win over Arkansas State and is now one game away from earning bowl eligibility after the 31-13 win.
A pair of Jalen Tolbert touchdown receptions in the first half and a pair of interceptions by Darrell Luter Jr in the second half propelled the Jags (5-3, 2-3 SBC) over the Red Wolves (1-7, 0-4 SBC).
The Jags opened the game with an 8 play, 79 yard touchdown drive on their first possession. A great mix of run and pass where the shortest gain was of 5 yards was capped off by a 13 yard touchdown pass by Jake Bentley to Jalen Tolbert.
The offense got the ball back after Arkansas State went three-and-out. The Jags only needed 7 plays to cover the 75 yards for the score. Jalen Tolbert got his second score of the game and his 9th overall against the Red Wolves when Jake Bentley connected with him for 30 yards.
Alan Lamar returned the kickoff 52 yards to give the Red Wolves the ball in Jaguar territory for the first time in the game. The Jags defense were backed up with ASU getting a 1st and goal at the 7 yard line after a pass interference penalty. On 4th and goal at the 1 Chris Henderson hurried quarterback Layne Hatcher and helped force an incomplete pass.
The Jaguar offense took over possession at their own 1 yard line with 1:41 left in the opening quarter. Terrion Avery barely got the ball out of the end zone saving a safety on the first play from scrimmage. When it was all said and done the Jags put together a 18 play, 99 yard touchdown drive that was capped off by a two yard touchdown pass from Bentley to Avery. The drive took 8:31 off the clock with the Jags up 21-0.
The defense forced another three-and-out and pushed the offense back 16 yards as they did it.
Bryan Hill took the first handoff and scampered 47 yards to the Red Wolves 14 yard line. Then Bentley connected with Brandon Crum for a 14 yard touchdown to cap off the 2 play, 61 yard drive for a 28-0 advantage.
Alan Lamar took the ensuing kickoff 100 yards to give Arkansas State their only touchdown of the game to make the halftime score 28-7.
“I thought it was a tremendous first half in terms of our execute,” head coack Kane Wommack said. “I thought we did a poor job on our kickoff unit, we have to get better there. But outside of that, we really played with a lot of effort and energy. We executed at a high level. It was a good response victory to a week ago against Louisiana-Monroe where I didn’t think we played anywhere near the standard offensively, defensively, special teams.”
Arkansas State came out hot early in the second half but the Jags defense got a stop when needed and forced a 32 yard field goal and cutting the score 28-10 with 10:05 left in the third quarter.
The South Alabama offense’s next three possession all were three-and-outs.
Arkansas State’s first two possessions after the field goal all ended with turnovers. The first was a fumble forced and recovered by AJ DeShazor. The second was Darrell Luter’s first interception of the game.
On the second play of the fourth quarter, Jake Bentley was intercepted when his pass intended for Tolbert was taken away by the defender. But the Jags would get it back a few plays later when Devin Rockette caught the ball as he was sliding down.
The Jags defense bent but refused to break again when the Red Wolves drove down to the Jaguar 17 yard line. A sack on 3rd and 7 took the option of going for it out of ASU head coach Butch Jones’ playbook and forced them to settle for a 43 yard field goal to shrink the lead to 28-13 with 6:22 left in the game.
The onsides kick attempt bounced and went off a Jaguar player out of bounds at the 50 yard line. On the kick Arkansas State’s Corey Rucker was injured. After a long time on the turf on the Jags sideline, he was finally helped up but immediately was assisted through the Jags bench towards the tunnel until the cart came to take him into the locker area.
Terrion Avery got 23 yards on the first play of the possession but the offense could not muster much else. Diego Guajardo made it a three score game with a 39 yard field goal for the 31-13 final score.
Darrell Luter got his second interception to ensure Arkansas State would not have another opportunity to score.
Game Stats
After putting up 352 total yards of offense in the first half. The Jags were negative in all three yardage categories in the third quarter. Their total yards was -5, their rushing yardage was -4 and their passing was -1 yard.
“I thought we played very hard and aggressive on defense the entire game,” Wommack said. “You look at the numbers and you can see that it was a dominating performance by our defense [only allowing] 242 yards total, giving up 38 yards rushing. They were 3-of-13 [on third down]. We stopped them in the red zone on fourth down. Obviously getting four takeaways on defense is huge and tremendous.
“Offensively, we did such a great job in the first half. I thought Arkansas State responded well in the second half. They competed their tails off, particularly their defense. I thought offensively, they did some challenging things that we had to continue to adjust to and we did. We’ve got to be more consistent though. When we can operate at such a high level at the beginning of the game, we need to do that in the third and fourth quarter as well.”
The Jags ended the game with 424 yards of total offense, they rushed for 173 yards and threw for 251 yards.
They were 5-of-14 (36%) on third down attempts and 2-of-3 (67%) on 4th down attempts. They had 23 first downs in the game, 20 of them came in the first half.
Arkansas State finished the game with 224 total yards of offense after going into halftime with 28 yards. They ran for only 38 yards and passed for 186.
The Jags defense held the Red Wolves to only 3-of-13 (27%) on third down and 1-of-2 (50%).
Arkansas State had 232 kickoff return yards, more than their total offensive output for the game.
Jake Bentley went 29-of-39 for 251 yards, four touchdowns and one interception. Jalen Tolbert caught 8 passes for 94 yards and two touchdowns. Jalen Wayne, Caullin Lacy and Lincoln Sefcik all caught five passes for 42, 39, and 35 yards respectively. Brandon Crum cuaght 3 passes for 31 yards and a touchdown. Terrion Avery’s only catch of the game went for a 2 yard touchdown.
Terrion Avery carried the ball 22 times for 113 yards. Bryan Hill had one carry before injurying his shoulder and it went for 47 yards. Kareem Walker had 5 carries for 26 yards.
Quentin Wilfawn led the defense with 11 total stops, 6 solo with 1/2 sack. Ke’Shun Brown had two tackles for loss with one sack. Charles Coleman III had 1 1/2 sacks. Luter had one tackle for loss to go along with his two interceptions. Devin Rockette had 1/2 tackle for loss to go along with his interception.
Layne Hatcher was 19-of-37 for 186 yards and three interceptions. Corey Rucker caught 4 passes for 67 yards.
Lincoln Pare had 8 carries for 32 yards. Johnnie Lang had 7 carries for 20 yards.
The Jags have the most wins (5) since the 6-7 record in the 2016 season, the last appearance in a bowl game.
“…the standard and capability of this team is not five wins,” Wommack said. “It’s disappointing that it’s been so long since we’ve had five wins as a program, but at the same time we need to be process oriented. To me, we are not where we can be, but we’ve created an opportunity for this team to play our best ball at the end of the year and that is really exciting.
“You appreciate what you have, because at the end of the season there are a lot of teams sitting there that don’t get to compete or play their best football at the end of the year and they don’t have opportunities to better themselves in a bowl game and all the preparation that comes with that. We do have those things, but our process and consistency has to get better. This was a great win, but we need to move the dial forward in this program, and until we become a consistent football team, we will not achieve our goals.”
Next Game
The Jags will travel to Troy for the annual Battle for the Belt game against the Trojans. Kickoff in Troy, AL is scheduled for 2:30pm.
