All gas, no brakes for 2-0 Johnson C Smith football

TROY HULL | THE CHARLOTTE POST

Johnson C. Smith receiver Brevin Caldwell avoids a tackle against St. Augustine’s in a CIAA game on Oct. 14, 2023. Caldwell has five touchdown catches through two games in 2024, one shy of his career best in 2022 when he earned All-CIAA as a freshman.

The rubber is about to hit the road for Johnson C. Smith.

The Golden Bulls, who opened the season with a pair of wins against SIAC opponents, turn their attention to the CIAA portion of their schedule starting Saturday against Lincoln (Pa.) at McGirt Field. Even with the early success, there’s no room for overconfidence.

“The mindset around here is that our foot is on the gas,” coach Maurice Flowers said. “We’re not even thinking about being 2-0; we’re looking at going 1-0 each day.”

The Golden Bulls, who are tied with Virginia State for third in the Box To Row Division II Black college coaches’ poll, are 2-0 after routing Morehouse 37-13. Smith, which has yet to trail this season, was far from perfect, which has Flowers’ attention.

“It’s always good to get a win,” he said. “It’s also good to know you’ve got plenty of room for growth. We’ve still got plenty of room to get better, and that’s a good thing. It’s easy to keep these guys motivated. It’s easy to flip on the film and show these guys that we’ve still got to tighten up a bunch of things on offense, defense and special teams.”

JCSU, which takes on Lincoln (Pa.) Sept. 14 for the Golden Bulls’ home opener, might need fine-tuning, but they’re in position to open with three straight wins for the first time since 2013. They overcame a slow start against Morehouse to pull away in the second half behind an efficient offense and stifling defense – the same formula deployed in their 21-13 win against Tuskegee in the season opener.

“We don’t spend a lot of time talking about our opponents,” Flowers said. “We really just talk about what our performance is, what our expectations are and the level of play we want to play at and we definitely fell short there. It’s good to that we tightened up on some things as the game went on, but we definitely still had too many penalties, and we had a turnover deep in our own territory. We missed a few blocking assignments and calls that were covered during the course of the week. And we had some blown coverages.”

Aside from that, JCSU made improvements. On offense, quarterback Darius Ocean and receiver Brevin Caldwell teamed up for career days with Ocean, a Hough High graduate making his second collegiate start, connecting on 14-of-23 passes for 223 yards and three touchdowns – all to Caldwell, an Ardrey Kell alum who tallied nine receptions for 140 yards.

Caldwell’s five touchdowns is one shy of his season best set in 2022 when he earned All-CIAA as a freshman.

“One of the things that we really, really put a lot of emphasis on is completion percentage and touchdown-to-interception ratio,” Flowers said. “Each game our goal is complete 65% of our passes. We were better [against Morehouse] than we were [against Tuskegee], but we still didn’t reach our goal. Touchdown to interception ratio, we always want to be four to one. We definitely hit that goal, so those are good things, but we did miss a couple of reads.”

Defensively, the Golden Bulls conceded 263 yards to Morehouse, including 49 rushing on 25 carries and tallied three sacks. Nickel Shamar Baker, a transfer from Charlotte, picked off a pair of passes, including a 24-yard touchdown return that pushed JCSU’s lead to 20-7.

“He has the versatility to be able to cover folks and also the physicality to be able to play the run game,” Flowers said. “So obviously it was a big deal for him.”

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