Tulane rallies past Southern Miss, wins Armed Forces Bowl
FORT WORTH, Texas – Justin McMillan threw three touchdown passes in the second half when Tulane rallied for a 30-13 win while renewing a rivalry against Southern Mississippi in the Armed Forces Bowl on Saturday.
The Golden Eagles (7-6) took a 13-0 lead after Jack Abraham threw a touchdown and ran for a score on their first drives, but the quarterback took a hard shot on his last snap before halftime and didn’t play again. They also lost top running back De’Michael Harris to a hamstring injury in the first half.
Tulane (7-6) tied the game at 13-all on its first possession after halftime, when McMillan threw a 52yard TD pass to Jalen McCleskey.
McMillan had a high-stepping 18-yard run to set up Merek Glover’s third field goal, a tiebreaking 36-yarder, before TD passes to Jacob Robertson (7 yards) and a wide-open Amare Jones (20 yards) on the next two drives.
McMillan had only 22 yards passing at halftime, but was 9-of-10 for 193 yards after that in his final game. The former transfer from LSU won two Texas state championships playing at Cedar Hill High School, which is about 35 miles from the TCU campus where the bowl was played.
Abraham, only the third Golden Eagles quarterback with a 3,000-yard passing season, threw 44-yard touchdown to Quez Watkins and ran 3 yards for another score for the 13-0 lead.
But Abraham took a shot on a blitz by linebacker Lawrence Graham and fell hard on his shoulder on a third-down incompletion in the final minute of the first half. Abraham never returned, though he was still in uniform on the sideline after halftime.