South Carolina State Routs Morgan State 51-10 as Keely Watson Throws Four Touchdowns

Chennis Berry has a pest-control theory of conference football. After South Carolina State flattened Morgan State on Thursday night in Baltimore, the Bulldogs coach told the locker room that "it's not the fly you just killed, it's about the other flies that's watching." Translation for the rest of the MEAC: the swatter is out, and it is not going back in the drawer.

South Carolina State beat Morgan State 51-10 at Hughes Stadium on Oct. 29, piling up 509 yards to the Bears' 150 and scoring the final 30 points of the night. Keely Watson completed 27 of 36 passes for 279 yards and four touchdowns without an interception. The Bulldogs moved to 7-2 and 2-0 in the MEAC, and Morgan State fell to 5-4 and 0-2.

The win stretched South Carolina State's league streak under Berry to 12 straight, and it came one week after the Bulldogs opened their MEAC title defense by grinding out a 22-7 win over Norfolk State on Homecoming. That one was a slog. This one was a statement.

Two drives, two touchdowns, no doubt

South Carolina State scripted the opening like a team that had seen enough film to be bored by it. The first possession went 82 yards in 11 plays and ended with Josh Shaw plunging in from 1 yard out at the 10:26 mark of the first quarter. It was Shaw's 13th touchdown of the season, which ranks second in the FCS, per Live 5 News in Charleston.

The second drive covered 52 yards in eight plays, and Watson capped it with a 5-yard throw to Martavious Collins. That made it 14-0 with 3:40 still left in the opening quarter, and Morgan State had yet to find a first-quarter answer for anything the Bulldogs were doing on either side of the ball.

Morgan State finds a pulse, briefly

Then the game got interesting for about 15 minutes. On the first snap of the second quarter, Kacy Fields put the ball on the turf, and Raquane Matthews scooped it up and took it 10 yards for a Morgan State touchdown. It was a one-play, eight-second swing that the official scoring sheet charts as a minus-21-yard drive, which is about the most Morgan State thing that happened all night: the Bears' only touchdown came without their offense.

The Bears followed with their best possession of the game, a 13-play, 62-yard march that burned 7:55 and ended with Alex Amaya's 30-yard field goal. Suddenly it was 14-10 with 5:10 left in the half, and South Carolina State had put the ball on the ground in a way that a defending conference champion is not supposed to.

The turning point: zero seconds left

What happened next decided the game. South Carolina State got the ball back with under two minutes left in the half and went 59 yards in seven plays in 1:45. On the final snap before halftime, Watson found Troy Hillman for a 20-yard touchdown, and the extra point made it 21-10 at the break.

Morgan State head coach Damon Wilson knew exactly where the night turned. "It was a ball game, but giving up that touchdown right before halftime definitely hurt us," Wilson said in the Morgan State recap.

Wilson was right. Instead of heading to the locker room down four, the Bears trailed by 11 and never got within one score again.

A second half that felt like a shutout because it was

The Bulldogs defense took over from there. Early in the third quarter, Morgan State quarterback Cameron Edge fumbled, Ka'Von Chisolm recovered, and Jett Jackson converted the short field into a 35-yard field goal for a 24-10 lead with 12:04 left in the period. Late in the quarter, Watson hit DJ Maultsby from 10 yards out to push it to 30-10, though Jackson missed the extra point.

The fourth quarter was a victory lap. Watson threw a fourth touchdown pass, a 10-yarder to Shamontae Burgess, to finish a 12-play, 65-yard drive at 10:32. Quarterback Ronnie Robinson kept it on a 16-yard touchdown run at 6:48. And with 18 seconds left, Fields, the same player whose fumble had handed Morgan State its only touchdown, broke a 28-yard run for the final score. That is one way to settle a personal account.

Berry did not sound like a coach worried about style points. "I'm so proud for this football team right now," Berry told the team afterward, adding that "this was the first game we put all three phases together of dominating football."

Watson was surgical, and the defense was suffocating

Watson's line looks clean on paper and was even cleaner in practice. Watson completed 75 percent of the throws, spread four touchdowns among four different receivers, and never gave Morgan State a free possession through the air. Maultsby led the receivers with five catches for 51 yards, Hillman added four for 50, and Malaqhi Jones had four for 49. The Bulldogs also ran for 213 yards on 37 carries, with Fields at 71 yards on 11 attempts and Ricorian Brown adding 59 on 12.

The efficiency numbers are almost rude. South Carolina State converted all seven of its red-zone trips into points, six of them touchdowns. It went 7 of 12 on third down, ran 75 plays to Morgan State's 48, and held the ball for 33:39.

On the other side, the Bulldogs defense did not allow an offensive touchdown. Morgan State ran 14 times for minus-12 yards, a number dragged down by four sacks. Kwantre' Harry, Myles Dixon and Jayden Fuller had one apiece. Edge finished 17 of 28 for 144 yards, and the Bears went 3 of 13 on third down. Justin Perry was the lone bright spot in the passing game with five catches for 72 yards.

Morgan State's defense had its moments. Darius Jones made 10 tackles and Jordan Jeudy had 1.5 sacks among six stops, while Matthews added five tackles to go with the scoop-and-score. But a defense can only hold up for so long when its offense gives it nothing to work with, and by the fourth quarter the Bears were simply out of answers.

What it means

For South Carolina State, this was the first road test of the conference schedule, and it passed with room to spare. The bigger picture is a three-team race. Howard and North Carolina Central also entered the weekend unbeaten in league play, and they meet each other on Saturday. The Bulldogs travel to Howard on Thursday, Nov. 5, then face NCCU on Nov. 14, which means the MEAC title will likely be decided head to head in the next three weeks.

The stakes are familiar. The MEAC champion goes to the Celebration Bowl in Atlanta on Dec. 12, and South Carolina State is the defending HBCU national champion after outlasting Prairie View A&M 40-38 in four overtimes last season. Berry has made a habit of winning the league, and this team, now 7-2, looks built to do it again.

For Morgan State, the losses are stacking up at the worst possible time. The Bears have dropped three straight, including a 26-20 overtime loss to Howard the week before, and an 0-2 start in conference play leaves them with very little margin in the MEAC race. Next up is a trip to Delaware State on Nov. 7.

The last word

There was a version of this game that stayed close. Morgan State had cut it to 14-10, owned the clock for most of the second quarter and was playing at home. Then Watson went 59 yards in under two minutes, Hillman caught the ball with zeroes on the clock, and the rest of the evening was a demonstration.

Berry told HBCU Pass afterward that "we're 1-0," which is a coach's way of saying the next fly is already buzzing. Full stats are in the ESPN box score (opens in a new tab), and Morgan State's view of the night is in the Bears' official recap (opens in a new tab).

Sources: ESPN box score, HBCU Legends On SI, FloFootball, HBCU Sports, Live 5 News and Morgan State Athletics. More college football coverage on Undrafted.

Photos: SC State Athletics.