The Southwest Mississippi Community College football team and home standing Coahoma Community College battled each other and a nearly hour-long power outage Thursday night before the Bears came away from Clarksdale with a 24-6 season-opening win.
After a scoreless first quarter, the Bears picked up the first points of the game with 13:40 left in the second quarter when quarterback Neil McLaurin closed out a six-play, 80-yard drive with a 51-yard touchdown run to give the Bears a 6-0 lead. The extra point attempt was unsuccessful.
Nakia Trotter, Jr., dashed into the end zone from one yard out and Casey Griffith booted the extra point to increase the Bears’ lead to 13-0 with 4:24 before the break.
The Tigers notched their only score of the game with 1:21 left before the half when Jaylen Haywood intercepted a pass and raced 37 yards into the end zone. As Ridge Simmerman prepared to kick the extra point, a blown fuse caused the stadium lights to go dark. After a delay of nearly an hour, Simmerman again lined up for the PAT, but it was no good, leaving the Bears on to top 13-6.
A 21-yard field goal from Ruben Maldonado, closing out an 11-play, 70-yard drive was all the offense either team could muster in the third quarter as the Bears moved out to a 16-6 advantage.
The Bears made the score 22-6 when McLaurin found Javian Jackson on the receiving end of a 20-yard scoring pass with 14:52 left in the game, ending a short four-play, 19-yard drive. The extra point attempt was no good.
With 8:02 still to play, the final points of the night went on the board when a bad snap on a Tigers punt attempt sailed out of their end zone for a safety, giving the Bears their final margin of victory.
“In this league, every win is a good win,” Bears head coach Tucker Peavey said. “We’re not a program where we can think” any opponent “is a guaranteed win.
“As always, the thing you want is to see guys execute and when they don’t, they bounce back. I thought we did some undisciplined things tonight and we didn’t do some things consistently. We gave up containment on our quarterback too much and we couldn’t run the ball with any consistency. So, we’ve got to look at what happened in those situations and get better for next week.”
The Bears picked up 349 yards of offense on the night, 179 via the air. McLaurin completed 13 of 23 passes for 150 yards with one touchdown. He was intercepted twice. Casey Haygood was good on three of four passes for 29 yards with one interception. Sophomore tight end Ravian Pierce hauled in seven passes for 75 yards while Trey Fleming had four receptions for 38 yards. Jackson had a 20-yard scoring catch.
McLaurin carried the ball 12 times for 73 yards and a touchdown while Trotter had 20 carries for 72 yards and a score.
The Bears had 18 first downs in the game and were penalized eight times for 90 yards. Maldonado punted twice for 48.5 yards while Drake Pace punted twice for 19 yards.
The Tigers totaled 246 yards of offense. Quavier Hammond toted the ball 20 times for 74 yards while Rodney English was good on nine of 26 passes for 75 yards and a touchdown. He was intercepted twice, both times by freshman defensive back Kendell Anderson.
The hosts had 14 first downs in the game and were whistled for 128 yards on 18 penalties.
