ATLANTA – (Staff and Wire Service Report) – Alabama QB Jalen Milroe passed for two touchdowns and No. 8 Alabama rolled to a crucial upset by dispatching top-ranked Georgia 27-24 in the Southeastern Conference title game on Saturday in Georgia.
Jermaine Burton and Jamarion Miller caught touchdown passes and Roydell Williams scored on a run as the Crimson Tide (12-1) won their 11th consecutive game. The victory snapped Georgia’s SEC record 29-game winning streak and greatly bolsters Alabama’s hopes of crashing the four-team College Football Playoff field.
Kendall Milton rushed for two touchdowns and Carson Beck added one for Georgia (12-1). Beck completed 21 of 29 passes for 243 yards. Bulldogs star Brock Bowers played despite an ankle injury but was largely ineffective, with five receptions for 53 yards.
Milroe was 13-of-23 passing for 192 yards for the Crimson Tide and was named MVP of the game. The two-time defending national champion Bulldogs lost to Alabama for the eighth time in the past nine meetings.
No. 7 Texas 49, No. 18 Oklahoma State 21
Quinn Ewers passed for a record 452 yards and four touchdowns, and the Longhorns’ defense did the rest in a shellacking of the Cowboys in the Big 12 championship game in Arlington, Texas.
Texas (12-1) captured its first Big 12 title since 2009. Ewers completed his first 12 passes of the game to eight different receivers and finished 35-for-46 while throwing for the most yards ever in a Big 12 championship game.
The Longhorns’ defense did not allow Oklahoma State (9-4) to broach the 200-yard barrier until the 10-minute mark of the fourth quarter. Cowboys quarterback Alan Bowman threw for 250 yards and three touchdowns, but star running back Ollie Gordon, the Big 12’s offensive player of the year, managed only 34 yards on 13 carries.
SMU 26, No. 22 Tulane 14
Kevin Jennings threw a touchdown pass in his first college start, the Mustangs’ defense dominated and SMU defeated the Green Wave in the American Athletic Conference championship game in New Orleans.
Jennings, a redshirt freshman who had thrown just 24 passes this season, stepped in for injured Preston Stone and overcame three turnovers by passing for 203 yards and rushing for 63. The Mustangs (11-2) won the conference title in their last season before departing for the Atlantic Coast Conference.
Michael Pratt passed for 238 yards, but Makhi Hughes, the AAC’s leading rusher who rushed for at least 100 yards in seven of his past eight games entering Saturday, managed just 44 yards on 11 carries for the Green Wave (11-2), who had won 10 straight games.
–Field Level Media