BATON ROUGE, La. — Southern left Saturday’s game with several questions: who starts at quarterback after Ladarius Skelton was benched due to his unsportsmanlike conduct penalty; what happened to the Jaguars’ defense after Southern gave up 26 first half points; and who do the Blue and Gold put on the field after suffering a myriad of injuries, including both tight ends.
At the moment however, the Jaguars are just trying to grasp what happened in their only home game of the spring season — a 33-30 loss to Arkansas-Pine Bluff.
“We was just out of character. I don’t know what led to that. That’s not how we play, and that’s not how we going to start playing. I still think we got a pretty good football team, but it’s just, we haven’t had time to put it together. We need a much needed by week to continue to try to put it together, but that wasn’t to my liking what we saw today,” head coach Dawson Odums said.
The biggest challenge Southern faced was battling the unknown. Saturday was Pine Bluff’s first game of the season, and the Golden Lions brought 7 new coaches into its new staff. The Jaguars couldn’t properly prepare for their opponent.
“We sort of had a good idea of their personnel, but again, they had a new offensive coordinator, new defensive coordinator so we didn’t have any film,” Odums added.
Southern lost 33-30, but the Jaguars have a bye next weekend. Southern will then play at Texas Southern on March 20th.
Click the video provided for more detail on the game.