Austin Peay Scores 28 Straight to Bury Gardner-Webb
Gardner-Webb threw for 312 yards and lost by 18. It ran the ball 20 times for 32 yards, which turns out to matter. Austin Peay won 35-17 by scoring 28 straight points, and for the first quarter and a half it was a perfectly even game.
Gardner-Webb led 3-0 on a Tyler Simpson field goal, Austin Peay answered with a 1-yard Courtland Simmons run, and Cole Pennington hit Jalile Bost for 43 yards to put Gardner-Webb back up 10-7 early in the second quarter. That was the last lead it had. Isaiah Groves ran in from a yard out to make it 14-10, Chris Parson threw a 49-yard touchdown to Denver Harper with 3:22 left in the half, and it was 21-10 at the break. Three lead changes in all, and every one of them before halftime.
Parson ran in from 4 yards early in the third and Simmons added a 19-yard run late in the quarter, which made it 35-10 entering the fourth. Adrian Cormier's 1-yard run just 1:30 into the final quarter was the only Gardner-Webb score after the half.
Austin Peay out-gained them 484 yards to 344, with 308 passing and 176 rushing on 46 carries. Each team threw one interception. Pennington went 27 of 49 for 312 yards and a touchdown, and Kory Jones caught 9 for 102, so the passing game was fine. It just never produced a second touchdown after Bost's.
Austin Peay is 1-0 and Gardner-Webb 0-1. Fantasy-wise, Parson led everybody with 27.4 points, ahead of Simmons (21.2) and Harper (19.8).