Louisiana
South Alabama holds on for 24-22 win over first-place Louisiana
South Alabama didn’t let this one get away, and is still alive for a Sun Belt championship.
The Jaguars held on for a 24-22 victory over first-place Louisiana on Saturday night at Cajun Field in Lafayette, winning despite failing to score in the second half. South Alabama (5-5, 4-2 Sun Belt Conference) still has a chance to earn a spot in the Sun Belt championship game if it wins its final two contests and gets some help.
“The first half was really beautiful. In the second half we made our mistakes,” South Alabama coach Major Applewhite said. “We had a special teams error that resulted in a field goal. We had a bust on the defensive call that ended up in a big touchdown, bringing it within eight, but we also did some good things. After the issue on the punt, we held them to a field goal. We did move the ball a little bit, obviously we need to sustain drives better in the second half; put points up on the board, but when it mattered, we got some first downs and took some time off the clock.”
On Saturday, South Alabama built a 24-3 halftime lead before Louisiana stormed back to get within two points with 1:16 to play. However, Jaguars nose tackle Wy’Kevious Thomas stopped Ragin’ Cajuns quarterback Chandler Fields short of the goal line on a 2-point attempt to preserve the lead.
Louisiana (8-2, 5-1) then tried an onside kick, but the ball went out of bounds and to South Alabama. The Jaguars then knelt on the ball three times for the victory, its second straight thriller in Lafayette after a 20-17 win on a last-second field goal in 2022.
For most of the night Saturday, it looked like no such dramatics would be necessary. The Jaguars — who blew fourth-quarter leads in losses to Arkansas State and Georgia Southern this season — scored touchdowns the first three times they had the ball on two short runs by Lopez and a third by Kentrel Bullock, then got Laith Marjan’s 35-yard field goal on the final play of the half to lead by 21 at the break.
“We were just executing the offense,” Lopez said. “We weren’t trying to do too much. If the hole was open, we took it. We game-planned for two weeks and we just executed it.”
Louisiana rallied, however, even after starting quarterback Ben Wooldridge was knocked from the game with a shoulder injury early in the third quarter. The Ragin’ Cajuns got a pair of short Kenneth Almandares field goals to cut the lead to 24-9 early in the fourth quarter.
Meanwhile, South Alabama could not muster much of anything offensively in the second half. After a punt with 9:30 remaining, Louisiana scored quickly on Fields’ 66-yard touchdown pass to Dre’Lyn Washington, which made it 24-16 at the 8:28 mark.
South Alabama tried to run out the clock, but Lopez was intercepted on a deep ball by safety Kody Jackson with 5:30 to play. Louisiana then drove 85 yards for a touchdown, taking advantage of an offsides penalty and a pass interference flag before Fields powered in from the 2 with 76 seconds remaining to pull the Ragin’ Cajuns within the fateful two points.
South Alabama can clinch bowl-eligibility for the third straight year by beating last-place Southern Miss next Saturday. To win the West, the Jaguars would need to beat both the Golden Eagles and Texas State on Nov. 29 and have Arkansas State (which holds the head-to-head tiebreaker) and Louisiana lose at least once each in their final two games.
Fields finished 14-for-17 for 185 yards and a touchdown for the Ragin’ Cajuns, in addition to the rushing score. Louisiana outgained South Alabama 413 yards to 353, 253-58 in the second half.
Lopez finished 24-for-34 for 285 yards passing with one interception, and also rushed for 34 yards and a score. Jamaal Pritchett caught 11 passes for 170 yards, but the Jaguars ran for just 68 yards as a team.
The South Alabama defense had its share of big moments before Thomas’ stop on the 2-point attempt, including a fourth-down stand on Louisiana’s opening possession, an interception by Jaden Voisin and a fumble recovery by Wesley Miller. Voisin’s interception was his fourth of the season and 10th of his career, a South Alabama program record.
South Alabama also allowed just one touchdown on four trips into the red zone by Louisiana, with three of those possessions ending on Almandares field goals of 35, 25 and 22 yards. The Ragin’ Cajuns were 4-for-13 on third down, though they did go 3-for-4 on fourth.
Kickoff for South Alabama at Southern Miss is set for 2 p.m. next Saturday, with live streaming on ESPN+.
Louisiana
Mom whose 3 children were killed in Louisiana mass shooting still has bullet lodged in face — and sometimes thinks kids are alive
The mother of three of the eight children massacred by deranged Army veteran dad Shamar Elkins in Louisiana still has a bullet lodged in her head and is struggling with her memory — sometimes believing her kids are still alive, according to a relative.
Christina Snow, the girlfriend of 31-year-old Shamar Elkins, was shot in the face early Sunday when the former National Guardsman went on a shooting rampage at two nearby homes in Shreveport.
Three of Snow’s children she shared with Elkins — Braylon Snow, 5, Khedarrion Snow, 6, and Sariahh Snow, 11 — were killed in their home.
Elkins fired a bullet through Snow’s nose which is lodged in her head, and doctors aren’t ready to risk surgery, according to her cousin Jamarckus Snow.
The mom is now dealing with heartbreaking memory loss about the fate of her kids.
“One day, she’ll remember they’re dead. I heard yesterday she woke up and was like, ‘I got to get my kids ready for school.’ She’ll lose memory of what happened,” he told NBC News.
“One day, she’ll know, and the next day, she’s thinking her kids is still there.”
Follow the latest updates on the Louisiana father who killed 8 children in Shreveport shooting:
Elkins fatally shot his seven children — the three he shared with Snow and his four daughters with his wife, Shaneiqua Pugh: Jayla Elkins, 3, Shayla Elkins, 5, Kayla Pugh, 6, and Layla Pugh, 7.
He also killed Mar’Kaydon Pugh, 10, the son of his wife’s sister, who was staying at their house.
The vet turned his gun on Pugh and Snow, too, severely wounding both women, who are still in the hospital.
Elkins shot himself in the driveway of his former military mentor as law enforcement closed in.
The motive for the shooting remains unclear, but Elkins was suffering from mental health issues and was scheduled to appear in court on Monday after Pugh asked him for a divorce.
Louisiana
Federal appeals court upholds Texas’ Ten Commandments law. What does it mean for Louisiana?
A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a Texas law requiring public schools to post the Ten Commandments, just weeks after the same court allowed a similar Louisiana law to take effect.
A majority of judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Texas’ law, which is nearly identical to Louisiana’s, is constitutional and does not violate students’ religious freedom. In February, the court lifted an injunction on Louisiana’s law, which cleared schools to put up the posters, but the judges said it was too early to rule on that law’s constitutionality.
Tuesday’s ruling could bode well for Louisiana’s law if it eventually returns to the 5th Circuit, considered the country’s most conservative federal court of appeals.
In their majority opinion, the judges rejected the argument that posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms would pressure students to honor the biblical mandates or adopt particular beliefs.
“To plaintiffs, merely exposing children to religious language is enough to make the displays engines of coercive indoctrination. We disagree,” the majority wrote about the Texas law, known as S.B. 10. A minority of the court’s active judges dissented.
Even though Tuesday’s ruling only addressed the Texas case, defenders of Louisiana’s legislation celebrated it as a victory. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said the 5th Circuit’s argument in upholding Texas’ law was identical to the one Louisiana made in defense of its law.
“Our law clearly was always constitutional,” she posted on X, “and I am grateful that the Fifth Circuit has now definitively agreed with us.”
Louisiana’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed the law in 2024, which requires all public K-12 schools and colleges to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom. A group of parents quickly challenged the law in court, and a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction that stopped the state from enforcing the law.
In February, the 5th Circuit reversed the lower court’s decision, saying it had been premature to block the law before it took effect. The judges said they could not rule on the law’s constitutionality before seeing how it played out in schools.
But in the case of Texas’ law, which that state’s Republican-led Legislature passed in 2025, the court did rule on the merits.
Rejecting arguments made by attorneys for the Texas families who challenged the law, the 5th Circuit majority said that requiring public schools to post the Ten Commandments does not amount to the government endorsing a particular religion, which the U.S. Constitution forbids. The law also does not impose religious beliefs on students, the judges wrote.
“As noted, S.B. 10 authorizes no religious instruction and gives teachers no license to contradict children’s religious beliefs (or their parents’),” the majority opinion says. “No child is made to recite the Commandments, believe them, or affirm their divine origin.”
The Texas families were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Texas, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, with the law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP serving as pro bono counsel. The same groups, including Louisiana’s ACLU chapter, represented the Louisiana families.
In a statement Tuesday, the organizations said they are “extremely disappointed” by the 5th Circuit’s ruling, adding that they expect to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“The First Amendment safeguards the separation of church and state, and the freedom of families to choose how, when and if to provide their children with religious instruction,” the groups said. “This decision tramples those rights.”
Nearly all major industries in Louisiana added jobs over the past year, signaling momentum for a stronger future, according to a recent report from Leaders for a Better Louisiana.
The organizat…
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