The Prairie View A&M Panthers are on a mission to win the SWAC. On Thurdsay night in Baton Rouge LA with 17.6 seconds left in a thrilling, muddy, high-stakes slugfest inside A.W. Mumford Stadium, the Southern Jaguars saw their best player lose the football in crunch time, a mere 6 yards away from the potential game-winning touchdown or with time left for a short field-goal try, allowing Prairie View to escape with a 16-14 victory Thursday night in a crucial Southwestern Athletic Conference showdown.
For the first time all season, star wide receiver Juamorris Stewart had been stripped, and the Panthers held him down as the ball trickled away. He could only look at the ball as it tumbled along the sloppy surface.
Prairie View covered it up.
In doing so, the Panthers (5-1, 4-0 SWAC) took control of the Western Division race.
In doing so, they suffocated the Jaguars’ dream of a conference championship.
“This was a big win. No doubt about it. No doubt about it,” said sixth-year coach Henry Frazier III, whose Prairie View program has risen from laughingstock to a physical, powerful contender on the cusp of a SWAC title.
“Somehow, some way, I knew our defense was going to step up.”
That it did.
Thanks to their victory Thursday, the Panthers can afford to lose one of their last three games and still reach the SWAC Championship Game in Birmingham, Ala., on Dec. 12.
As for Southern, its only chance to claim the West title is to win all of its last four games and hope Prairie View goes winless the rest of the way.
“Our players understood the magnitude of what this game meant,” SU coach Pete Richardson said. “We had an opportunity. Every time you blow that many opportunities, you’re not going to beat a good football team.”
It was the Panthers’ first win in A.W. Mumford Stadium since 1963.
Meanwhile it's time for this weeks picks in the NFL. Donal Ware has the 411 on this weeks games.
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