GSU

GSU takes advantage of Jackson State mistakes

Antonio Morales Gannett

JACKSON, Miss. — Harold Jackson said he wasn’t fazed by the outside noise when an online petition, which called for his firing, was created in the wake of an 0-3 start by Jackson State.

The noise wasn’t as loud after after a win against Texas Southern last week, but one would expect it to only get louder after Saturday’s game.

The Tigers turned in an uneven performance, which featured inconsistent play in all phases of the game, and fell to Grambling, 59-27, in a SWAC contest in front of 15,940 at Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium.

“When you go in the ballgame, you expect they’ll be a little better than what you saw tonight. We played a good football team,” said Jackson, who is now 6-11 overall as JSU’s head coach. “But we can’t go out and make mistakes and do the things we did in that ballgame. Every time we got something going we found something (bad), a turnover, a penalty, or whatever.

“It wasn’t what they were doing, it was what we were doing to ourselves.”

JSU’s defense has been suspect all season, and that was the case against Grambling (3-2, 3-0 SWAC).

Grambling posted 506 total yards and became the third team to score 50 or more points against JSU (1-4, 1-2 SWAC) this season.

Quarterback Johnathan Williams won SWAC Offensive Player of the Week honors last week after a six-touchdown performance. He followed that up with 327 passing yards and five touchdowns against JSU.

His three second-quarter touchdown passes helped Grambling establish control of the game.

Grambling also rushed for 179 yards, led by a 97-yard performance from running back Martez Carter, who opened the scoring with a 17-yard touchdown run that came on a nice cutback against JSU’s defense, which had him cornered in the backfield.

“We have to sit down and talk about that defense, because a lot of points have given up,” Jackson said. “Both sides, the players and coaches (on defense), have to put it together.”

Added defensive end Teddrick Terrell: “It’s very frustrating, you have to keep the guys encouraged and you have to keep working. Fifty points is a lot of points, 40, 30 is a lot of points. It’s very tough (right now).”

The offense looked good at times, but was too inconsistent. Quarterback LaMontiez Ivy threw two interceptions, receiver Will Golston fumbled the ball, the team couldn’t generate a run game and there were five sacks.

JSU did manage to put 540 yards of total offense. Ivy passed for for 490 yards and three scores.

The offense wasn't able to score any points after the defense gave them the ball twice on Grambling turnovers.

“When we stayed discipline, didn’t shoot ourselves in the foot, we were good,” Ivy said. “We were converting then we’d get a penalty, a blown assignment or a bad read and it cost us.”

The special teams had a rough night, too, as kicker Ryan Deising missed two field goals and had an extra point blocked.

JSU was within eight points, 28-20, at the half but was outscored 31-7 in the second half.

Receiver Devin Fosselman had a big game with 10 receptions for 148 yards.