BATON ROUGE, La. -- Never mind the fact that Southern University lost to Prairie View A&M College 2 weeks ago and then laid an egg against North Carolina A&T, the Jags are still the team the beat, and Pete Richardson is the coach to beat.
At Southern, Richardson has won 4 HBCU national titles in 12 years and five Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) titles. He has never had a losing season. Prairie View beat the Jags for the first time in 35 years, even Richardson had hair back then.
Each of the last 3 seasons, Richardson has led an injury-plagued Jaguar squad to a winning record and has won SWAC Western Division almost every other year on average.
To be honest Prarie View, or "PV" as the locals say, is not the doormat it used to be. This year they have scholarships and the like and have turned around the program. Southern committed 4 turnovers and only rushed for 59 yards on 33 carries against Prairie View (The Jaguars are ranked 115th of 116 teams in Division I-AA with only 39 rushing yards a game) in the 26-23 overtime loss to PV. A week before they played Southern PV held Edward Waters College (I know, I know, WHO?!) to 31 yards while PV gained 475 yards. Against Southern the PV Panthers popped for 251 on the ground. But, hey, the Jags have been unable to stop the run all year. (The previous high under Richardson was 279 in the 2004 Bayou Classic to Grambling).
PV won 3 games in 2004, then went 5-6 last year. Now, they are 2-1 in the SWAC. Things are definitely bananas in the SWAC this year, with good teams being whupped by bad teams, and sad teams getting gangsta and whupping up on good teams. Don't believe me? Click
here to see it.
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