Covering the Land of Lincoln

Tennessee State football out of OVC title picture with loss to SEMO

The Tennessee State football team fell out of contention for the Ohio Valley Conference championship Saturday night after losing to Southeast Missouri 42-0 at Nissan Stadium.

It was the second straight loss for the Tigers (3-6, 2-2) after putting together a three-game win streak.

TSU will play its final OVC game against UT Martin at home next week.

Southeast Missouri (7-2, 3-0) and UT Martin (5-4, 3-0) are tied for first in the conference and TSU is in third place.

The Tigers showed signs of life a couple of times in the first half, but fizzled out each time they got into scoring range. SEMO put the game out of reach when Geno Hess ran for his second touchdown midway through the third quarter to put the Redhawks up 28-0.

TSU, which lost to Murray State 19-6 last week, has gone eight consecutive quarters without scoring a touchdown.

“It’s concerning,” coach Eddie George said. “Schematically speaking, from a play-calling perspective it’s there. It’s just missed opportunities. We had a dropped touchdown, a missed block here or there. This is, again, a part of the process of figuring out who we are. As ugly as it may look, we’ve just got to preach what we’ve been preaching and continue to chop wood.”

Geno Hess is hard to stop

One good thing about the game for TSU was that the Tigers’ defense won’t have to worry about stopping Hess again.

Hess, the OVC’s leading rusher, has given TSU fits four straight years.

The senior from Peoria, Illinois, rushed for 136 yards and three touchdowns on 18 carries. It was the most rushing yards by an individual rusher against TSU this season. Hess did not play in the fourth quarter.

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It gave Hess 544 yards on 58 carries and 11 touchdowns in his career against TSU.

He also went over 1,000 yards on the season for the second straight year. He now has 1,054 yards and 12 touchdowns.

TSU had only allowed two backs to rush for 100 yards this season − Frank Peasant (MTSU, 126 yards) and Jalon Jones (Bethune-Cookman, 116 yards).

Passing was a problem for TSU

While SEMO, the top rushing team in the OVC, leaned more heavily on the run and finished with 310 yards on 43 attempts, TSU was left having to depend on the pass after falling behind by such a large margin early.

And that did not go well. The passing game was off.

Draylen Ellis, who was under heavy pressure most of the game, completed 14 of 35 passes for 104 yards. He was sacked twice. His leading receiver was Zack Dobson, who had three catches for 29 yards.

Record performance

The loss guaranteed TSU its fifth straight losing season.

The Tigers went 6-5 in 2017 and 7-4 in 2016.

The most games TSU has won since 2017 was five last year in coach Eddie George’s first season. The Tigers must now win their remaining games against UT Martin at Nissan Stadium next week and at Texas A&M-Commerce on Nov. 19 to equal that.

Penalties were a plus

At least it wasn’t penalties which hurt the Tigers most.

Penalties were a point of emphasis for George and his staff after the Tigers committed a season-high 13 for 89 yards in last week’s 19-6 loss at Murray State. Eight of those penalties were false starts on the offense.

The Tigers are the most penalized team in the OVC and came into the game ranked 117th nationally averaging 8.9 penalties per game for 71.6 yards.

In this game, however, TSU was flagged for one false start. That was the only penalty for the Tigers, while SEMO was flagged six times for 75 yards.

Reach Mike Organ at 615-259-8021 or on Twitter @MikeOrganWriter.

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