ASU win more dominant than score
By Josh Moon
Montgomery Advertiser
Just looking at the score from Alabama State's 45-35 victory over Southern on Saturday, it's easy to assume that it was just one more hard-fought, down-to-the-wire game between the Hornets and Jaguars.
That would be wrong.
From start to finish, this game was controlled by ASU.
The Hornets scored 21 points and had more than 200 yards of total offense in the first quarter. They held a 21-point advantage in the fourth quarter. They limited the Southern passing game to just 116 yards in the first half. Besides the Jaguars' first touchdown, which came after an ASU fumble gave them the ball at the 4-yard line, ASU allowed Southern just one touchdown during the first three quarters.
"We let it get closer than it should have been," linebacker Billy Gresham said. "We really played them well for most of the game. It was completely different than the last few games we've had with them."
The questions during ASU's weekly football luncheon Monday centered on how the defense, which had given up, for all intents and purposes, only one TD through three quarters, surrendered three scores in the final 15 minutes.
Defensive coordinator Tony Pierce had an explanation.
"I think it was probably my fault," Pierce said. "I asked some young guys to do some things that they're probably not comfortable with. I need to keep in mind who we've got on the field during certain sets and not ask those guys to do too much. We kind of switched out of what we were doing earlier in the game."
Instead of continuing to play the style of defense that had so thoroughly bewildered the Southern offense over the first three periods, the Hornet coaches switched things up and went into a safer, more prevent-minded defense in the fourth quarter.
On top of that, because of injuries, ASU was forced to play a large number of inexperienced players late in the game.
