UAPB slows down after starting fast
A promising start against Southern University on Saturday afternoon wasn’t enough to get the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff out of its midseason funk.
Quarterback Austin Howard completed 22 of 32 passes for 245 yards and 5 touchdowns as the Jaguars shook off an early deficit to ease past the Golden Lions 47-40 at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock.
Wide receiver Jamar Washington caught 5 passes for 113 yards and 2 touchdowns while running back Herbert Edwards had 131 yards rushing for Southern (5-3, 3-1 Southwestern Athletic Conference), which used a 27-point burst over a 17-minute span in the first half and did just enough in the second half to beat the Golden Lions for the fifth consecutive time. Tight end Dillon Beard also had two touchdown catches for the Jaguars.
UAPB (2-6, 1-3), which has lost four games in a row, made things interesting in the second half. The Golden Lions trailed 34-14 at halftime before climbing to within 40-32 after tight end Jeremy Brown’s 10yard touchdown catch from backup quarterback Brandon Duncan with 11:22 left in the game. But Southern regained the momentum on a 46-yard touchdown run by running back Devon Benn at the 9:24 mark and held on to win.
“That second quarter was a blur to me,” said UAPB Coach Monte Coleman, whose team led 14-7 before Southern’s explosion. “I really don’t know how we got so far behind, but we didn’t quit. We were down 20-plus points, and it would have been very easy to quit. We fought and played hard, but Southern’s a good football team, and we can’t turn the football over and expect to win.”
Quarterback LeEarl Patterson went 13-of-19 passing for 154 yards, 1 touchdown and 1 interception for UAPB before being knocked out of the game late in the second quarter with an upper-body injury. Running back KeShawn Williams added 139 yards rushing and scored on touchdown runs of 28 and 26 yards. Wide receiver Paris Mack caught 5 passes for 81 yards and hauled in a 33-yard touchdown pass. Brown finished with two touchdown catches.
The Golden Lions did everything right offensively in the first quarter and got off to the kind of start that’s eluded them in the past three games. UAPB scored touchdowns on its first two possessions and had 168 yards of offense, but things went south thereafter. The Golden Lions mustered just 72 yards of offense the rest of the half and turned the ball over three times.
UAPB’s fast start also didn’t translate on defense. Southern matched UAPB score-for-score and when it forced the Golden Lions to punt on their third possession, the Jaguars took control.
The teams were tied 1414 before Howard’s 14-yard touchdown pass to Beard started a string of 27 consecutive points for Southern. Howard added a 15-yard scoring pass to wide receiver Dontrell Brown and a 4-yard touchdown pass to Washington to build the 20-point halftime lead.
“We lose our starting quarterback, lose our starting guard. … we lost a lot of guys in this one,” Coleman said. “But the next man up came in and played extremely hard. It showed a lot of character of the team, and we’ll build on what we did well and get better at the things we didn’t do well.”