LORMAN — Noah Johnson and the Alcorn State Braves had no problems with Texas Southern on Saturday.
Johnson threw for 311 yards and two touchdowns, and added another 74 yards and a touchdown rushing, as the Braves won 27-15 in their Southwestern Athletic Conference opener.

Alcorn (2-1, 1-0 SWAC) led 27-0 at halftime and was never threatened despite giving up a couple of touchdowns in the second half. Texas Southern quarterback Glen Cuiellette threw a pair of scoring passes to Bobby Hartzog, Jr., including a 16-yarder with just over a minute remaining.

Cuiellette completed 24 of 45 passes for 294 yards, with two touchdowns and two interceptions. Hartzog caught eight passes for 103 yards.

“The biggest thing is we got a win, but I’m not very happy with it,” said Alcorn coach Fred McNair, whose team was penalized 13 times for 149 yards. “I thought we played a good first half. The second half we came out and it seemed like we’ve never seen a football before. Penalties killed our drives and the second half was basically a flag fest.”

Texas Southern (1-2, 0-1) had zero rushing yards for the game. Cuiellette was sacked five times.
Thanks to Johnson, the game was well in hand by halftime. He finished a nine-play, 94 yard drive to open the game with a 1-yard touchdown run, and then threw an 8-yard TD pass to Raidarious Anderson midway through the first quarter.

P.J. Simmons punched in a 1-yard TD run with 5:57 left in the second quarter, and Johnson found Chris Blair for a 28-yard score with 43 seconds left before halftime.

Johnson finished 22-of-33 passing, and his 74 rushing yards were a team high. Simmons carried the ball 12 times for 69 yards and a TD, while Anderson caught eight passes for 168 yards.

Javen Morrison had two interceptions for the Braves’ defense.

“Those two picks would not have happened without my defensive line. We have the best D-line if you ask me. All the credit for those picks go to them and I wouldn’t have gotten those without them. I just happened to be in the right place at right time, but again that’s definitely because of the D-line,” Morrison said.

Jackson State 18, Florida A&M 16
Christian Jacquemin’s late field goal and Florida A&M’s poor clock management gave Jackson State an 18-16 victory in a penalty-filled game on Saturday night.

The Rattlers’ Ryan Stanley dropped back to pass and fumbled the ball when he was blindsided on a big hit by linebacker Quedarrion Barnett at midfield. Jacquemin’s field goal on the ensuing series put Jackson State on top, 18-16.

The Rattlers then drove inside the Jackson State 10-yard line, but the drive stalled when the Tigers blocked the go-ahead field goal with 3:48 remaining.

Florida A&M forced a punt and had the ball on its own 36-yard line with 1:09 left. Stanley later threw a pass to Marcus Williams, and Williams tiptoed along the sideline but was knocked out of bounds at the Tigers 2. But on the next play the Rattlers ran the ball up the middle without any timeouts remaining and couldn’t get the field goal unit set as time expired.