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Huntsville, Texas • Jeremiah Briscoe threw for 211 yards, including the winning 55-yard touchdown pass in the fourth quarter, to lift Sam Houston State to a 42-39 win over Southern Utah in the opening round of the FCS playoffs on Saturday.
Ridgeway Frank piled up 137 yards rushing on 29 carries and had two touchdowns, Corey Avery also ran for two TDs and Trenier Orr returned an interception for another score for Sam Houston State (9-3), which trailed 32-26 at the break.
"Just credit Sam Houston," SUU head coach Ed Lamb said in a statement. "They did a good job taking away some of the shorter passes and putting a lot of numbers in the box on the run. We tried to win over the top a couple times and we weren't able to connect. We had what we thought were some good one-on-one matchups and credit Sam Houston's DBs for playing physical down the field and not allowing those passes to connect."
The winning TD throw to Yedidiah Louis came with 3:44 left. Southern Utah (8-4) drove to midfield but gave up the ball on downs, then fumbled on its final possession. Sam Houston State recovered it with 47 seconds remaining and ran out the clock.
Ammon Olsen was 33 for 58 passing for 379 yards and four touchdowns to lead Southern Utah.
"On film, they showed they were very athletic, they like to blitz, they like to load the box," Olsen said about the Sam Houston defense. "But they also have some great DBs so we knew we had to attack they way we could, and they made some changes at have time that made us struggle and you've got to credit them, but we were just a couple plays short today."