A second Tulane running back in a three-week span hit the 200-yard mark Saturday, and the Green Wave needed every one.
Maurice Turner slipped through a lane to his left, cut back toward the middle of the field and powered his way through a series of three attempted tackles to keep his balance 74 yards to the goal line and a late lead, the team’s first since late in the second quarter.
A pair of former Louisiana high school stars set up Southern Miss for a potential overtime-forcing answer as quarterback Landry Lyddy (Calvary Baptist) led a 72-yard drive and kicker Creighton Wilbanks (Mandeville) lined up for a game-tying field goal.
But another, redshirt freshman Josh Lewis (Dutchtown), blocked the chip-shot to preserve the 24-21 comeback victory in the rekindled Battle for the Bell series.
“Unbelievable effort, unbelievable effort by all of ’em,” said Tulane coach Will Hall, . “That’s what we’ve got. We’ve got a bunch of winners. They are, man. They play for each other. They play hard. And I’ve said this all offseason: We’re 10 years into having a real football program here. That’s the advantage of what we’ve got going is you can win games ugly like this. A lot of college football teams don’t win games ugly any more because they don’t have the character and resolve and the camaraderie to do it. We do.”
Turner’s prolific day and some timely, critical plays in all three phases helped the Green Wave survive another contest in which Hall and company felt they played well below their potential.
The redshirt senior needed just 12 carries to rack up 200 yards and two explosive, go-ahead touchdowns: a 43-yarder early in the second quarter and the career-long 74-yarder in the final minutes.
He became just the 18th player in program history to surpass the 200-yard mark in a single game, joining fellow redshirt senior Jaylin Lucas (Terrebonne, Edna Karr) — who totaled 214 yards on 11 carries in the home opener against South Alabama — as the first teammates to manage the feat in the same season.
Tulane played three quarterbacks, bringing its total to four on the season already through four weeks.
Redshirt junior Kadin Semonza finished 12-for-24 (50%) for 129 yards with -17 rushing yards, and true freshman Trace Johnson went 2-for-5 for 35 yards.
And former multisport John Curtis star Dagan Bruno, a redshirt sophomore, came in late and picked up a game-sealing third-down conversion with a 9-yard run.
“We were trying to win the game, and that’s what we felt like we need to do to win the game,” Hall said. “We weren’t playing well at quarterback. I love Kadin. And, hey, he didn’t have a lot of help either now. He hit a lot of guys in the hands, and they didn’t catch the ball… Felt like after the sacks we had taken earlier in the game, I think Kadin would tell you that’s not him. He’s better than that. And then when that last interception happened, felt like it was time to give Trace a shot.
“He came in, gave us a spark, led us down to two scoring drives and that was awesome. And then we got Dagan in there at the end. As everybody knows, Dagan’s a winner and an option guy, and he’s really good at that package. Trace being a young guy has not mastered that package yet. And, boy, Dagan came in and runs it beautifully and gets a 9-yard gain and wins the game. And I think that’s his first-ever snap as a Tulane Green Wave. And that’s what we are. That’s the positives of this is like Josh Lewis blocking that field goal, Dagan Bruno’s first snap winning that game, Trace Johnson, T.J. Smith — those are all humongous positives that we can build a really good championship-contender off of, because we’ve got talent.”
This article will be updated further…
200-yard individual rushing games in one Tulane season
- 2007 — Matt Forte five times
- 2008 — André Anderson twice
- 2001 — Mewelde Moore twice
- 2027 — Jaylin Lucas vs. South Alabama, Maurice Turner vs. Southern Miss
