Ouachita Baptist's army of playmakers outdueled Southern Nazarene's solo act Thursday night.
Riley Harms, Connor Flannigan and Kendel Givens accounted for four touchdowns as the Tigers, ranked No. 14 in NCAA Division II, zipped past the Crimson Storm 49-28 at SNA Football Stadium in Bethany, Okla.
Eli Livingston also had a hand in three touchdowns for OBU (8-1, 8-1 Great American Conference), which moved to 10-0 all-time against Southern Nazarene and kept its hopes of gaining a postseason berth alive. The Tigers finished with 550 yards of offense as well, including 339 passing, in an abbreviated week.
"Really just two days to prepare for a group that's hard to prepare for," OBU Coach Todd Knight said of Southern Nazarene. "We took Sunday off, that's the normal day for us. We had a 20-period practice on Monday and then a 20-period practice on Tuesday. Wednesday, we get up early, we walk through before we get on the bus.
"We have a 30-minute walk-through as soon as we get off the bus. [Thursday morning] we had a walk-through ... did everything we could do to try to get our guys ready on a short week. It's tough to get ready for that offense, that quarterback and also what [Southern Nazarene] does defensively."
OBU's quartet of Harms, Flannigan and Givens provided plenty of offense despite the the team's limited preparation.
Harms, who leads the GAC in touchdown passes, had two scoring tosses while completing 16 of 22 passes for 274 yards for the Tigers, who used a 21-point second quarter to build a 28-14 lead at halftime. Flannigan, the league leader in receiving, caught eight passes for 149 yards, and Givens, who has scored more touchdowns this year than anyone in the conference, carried 24 times for 107 yards. The junior also scored twice while Livingston tallied 90 yards from scrimmage.
The production from those three was too much for Southern Nazarene (4-5, 4-5), which got another gaudy game from Division II's rushing leader Gage Porter. The 5-11 quarterback carried 20 times for 194 yards with 2 touchdowns. He was also 16-of-28 passing for 179 yards with 1 touchdown and 2 interceptions.
"You look at that quarterback, and see what he does year to year," Knight said of Porter. "He was the player of the league last year, and there's a reason for that. Just a great player. He's hard to tackle, and [Southern Nazarene] schemed some things up.
"He's running up in there like he's going take off, then throwing the little jump pass. They had so much schemed up for us, but our guys did a good job. We stopped him when we had to stop him."
The Crimson Storm had a hard time stopping the Tigers at all, especially in the first half.
OBU scored touchdowns on its first four possessions and nearly had another on its fifth series, but Harms threw his lone interception at the Southern Nazarene 7 with 45 seconds left in the second quarter.
Givens' 3-yard touchdown run with 5:55 in the first quarter gave the Tigers a 7-0 lead until Porter's 15-yard score tied it. Harms had back-to-back scoring passes -- a 22-yarder to Jeremiah Turner and a 40-yarder to Carter McElhany -- in the first six minutes of the second quarter to give OBU at 14-point advantage.
The teams traded touchdowns for the remainder of the half, with Jarrell Farr's running 72 yards for a score for Southern Nazarene, and Givens reaching the end zone on a 1-yard run.
Porter sandwiched a 23-yard touchdown run between an 8-yard touchdown pass and a 21-yard touchdown run by Livingston in the third quarter to stay close. The Crimson Storm later clawed within 42-28 with 11:11 to go in the fourth when Farr hauled in a 16-yard touchdown from Porter, but Livingston's 11-yard score with 7:41 remaining re-established OBU's 21-point lead.
Southern Nazarene wouldn't get any closer than that.
"It wasn't perfect," Knight said. "But when you look at what we did on special teams, look at what we did on offense, I just think those two phases really put us in position. There's still some things left on the field that we can get better at, but I'll take it against [Porter] any time of the day."