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Southern is confident in their growth as a team as they head into the SWAC Championship against Jackson State
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BATON ROUGE - Southern's football season is not over yet. This weekend, they will battle for the SWAC Championship against rival Jackson State.
The two programs played in week three of the season, and the Tigers of Jackson State dominated the Jaguars and won 33-15.
However, the Jags have since went on to go 7-1 in conference play and they've won their last four games in a row. They believe they are not the same team they were the last time they played in Veterans Memorial Stadium.
The Tigers, on the other hand, may be overlooking Southern. In a press conference this week, Jackson State defensive coordinator Torenzo Quinn was asked what he saw from Southern recently and he responded, "same team."
He then was asked what concerns he had about Southern, and he responded, "none."
Southern head coach Terrence Graves spoke to the media Tuesday and explained the changes that helped make the team better as the season went on.
"Guys have done a great job of trusting and buying into what we're doing. We moved some people around. We changed some people, and those guys playing with confidence. I think people tend to fail to realize sometimes that, you know, offensively, we came back with one starter, so there will always be growing pains. There's gonna be growing pains. That's what I told them. I said, 'The thing of it is, you just gotta continue to work and trust it, and if you trust it, it'll work out for you,'" Graves said.
Southern has not beaten Jackson State since the Spring Covid season back in 2021. They lost in double figures the last time they faced the Tigers in the conference title game in 2022.
With that, Southern is not the favorite to win this game, but Coach Graves is not exactly feeding into the underdog mentality.
"It's no different than when we had the SWAC Media Day, and we were picked fourth. Then that question was asked, 'How do I feel about it?' I said, 'You gotta pick us somewhere.' You've got to play the games. At the end of day, you've got to play the game. So, you know, we don't have the Hollywood story, you know, the underdog and all that. No, that's for TV. You know, our thing is we're gonna prepare. We gonna go out and we gonna play to win," Graves said.
Southern will try to bring home their first SWAC Championship since 2013 when they face Jackson State on Saturday at 1 p.m. The game will be televised on ESPN2.
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