Prairie View A&M turned the Prairie View Texas Southern Labor Day Classic into a rout Sunday. The Panthers cruised past their SWAC rival 52-14 at Panther Stadium at Blackshear Field. The win never felt in question once the opening kickoff went the distance. Prairie View improved to 1-1 overall and 1-0 in conference play, while Texas Southern fell to 1-1 and 0-1. It was never really close after that.
Kuykendall’s Return Sets the Tone Early
Jahbari Kuykendall needed just 15 seconds to set the tone. He took the opening kickoff back 90 yards for a touchdown, and Prairie View never trailed again. Quarterback Tevin Carter added a 24-yard touchdown pass to Damien McDaniel on the Panthers’ first offensive drive. Ethan Eddins tacked on a 37-yard field goal to make it 17-0 after one quarter. Texas Southern answered in the second on Cam’Ron McCoy’s 17-yard touchdown run, trimming the gap to 17-7 at halftime. Still, the Tigers never got closer than that.
Prairie View seized full control in the third quarter, scoring on all four of its possessions there. The Panthers outscored Texas Southern 28-0 in the period alone. Carter capped a five-play drive with a 24-yard touchdown run, then found Travon Jones for a 39-yard score. He connected with Chase Bingmon on a 46-yard touchdown next, then punched in a short score himself to push the lead to 45-7 entering the fourth. A second touchdown pass to Jones in the fourth quarter set the final margin. Carter accounted for five total touchdowns on the afternoon, and he did it efficiently.
Carter’s Efficient Day Through the Air
Carter finished 16 of 22 passing for 217 yards and four touchdowns. He added 17 rushing yards and a score on seven carries. According to Prairie View’s official athletics site, five different Panthers found the end zone. That spread made Texas Southern’s defense pick its poison all afternoon. Bingmon led the ground game with 60 yards and a touchdown on 10 carries, then caught four passes for 59 yards and another score. Rodny Ojo hauled in three catches for 68 yards. Jones turned three receptions into 36 yards and two touchdowns. None of Prairie View’s skill players needed a monster individual line. The production was simply too spread out for Texas Southern to key on any one target.
The Panthers’ defense matched that intensity. Prairie View sacked Texas Southern quarterbacks seven times for 32 yards and forced two turnovers, both fumbles the Panthers recovered themselves. Malachi Williams alone finished with three sacks among his six tackles. DeMarcus Wynn and Dorian Gates each forced and recovered a fumble of their own. Kamrin Canterbury paced everyone with 11 total stops. That kind of pressure up front erased whatever rhythm Texas Southern tried to build offensively, even on the drives where the Tigers were moving the ball.
Tigers Controlled the Clock but Not the Scoreboard
Oddly, the box score tells a story the final margin does not. Texas Southern actually outgained Prairie View 398-318 in total yards. The Tigers also held a lopsided time-of-possession edge of 40:22 to 17:35. None of it mattered much. Texas Southern could not find the end zone again until late. Ri’Jon Hammond capped a 14-play, 71-yard drive with an 8-yard touchdown run with five seconds left, more a formality than a rally. McCoy completed 10 of 19 passes for 81 yards and ran for a score. Athean Renfro led the Tigers’ ground attack with 85 yards on 17 carries. Those numbers point to an offense that moved steadily between the 20s but stalled whenever it mattered. It’s a pattern HBCU Gameday’s coverage framed as the gap between a program still finding its footing and one already playing at a championship level.
Prairie View converted all four of its red-zone chances into touchdowns, a number that decided the game more than total yardage did. The Panthers also had a career-best day in the return game, averaging 55 yards per kickoff return on top of Kuykendall’s opening score. Turning field position into points early put Texas Southern in a hole that 40 minutes of possession time couldn’t dig out of.
The History Behind the Prairie View Texas Southern Labor Day Classic
This rivalry rarely plays it safe. The Labor Day Classic has a long history of coming down to the wire, including last year’s walk-off finish that Prairie View won on the final play. Sunday broke that pattern completely. There was no late-game drama and no nail-biting fourth quarter, just a Panthers team that jumped ahead early and refused to let Texas Southern back in. Second-year head coach Tremaine Jackson got the response he wanted after his team’s opening-week loss at Tarleton State. The margin suggested a program that used that setback as fuel rather than a warning sign. It came against a rival that has owned this series historically, even while losing the last two meetings.
What It Means Going Forward
For Prairie View, the win keeps the Panthers on track in their SWAC title defense and hands them the early lead in the SWAC West race. For Texas Southern, the loss is a reminder that time of possession and total yardage mean little without finishing drives. That’s especially true against a defense as opportunistic as Prairie View’s proved to be Sunday. Both programs now shift attention to their next conference tests. This one, though, belongs entirely to the Panthers, who made the Prairie View Texas Southern Labor Day Classic look lopsided from the opening kickoff onward.
