QB Trey Green and RB Sta'fon McCray earned accolades this week following their performances in Prairie View A&M University football's 57-7 season-ending win at Arkansas-Pine Bluff.
 
Green was named SWAC Offensive Player of the Week by the league office, as well as College Sports Madness, and earned honorable mention accolades from the College Football Performance Awards. McCray was named SWAC Newcomer of the Week.
 
Playing in his final game as a Panther, Green (6-3, 225, R-Sr; Beaumont, Texas) completed a stellar 23-of-29 passes (79.3%) for 400 yards with a career high five touchdowns and no interceptions in a 57-7 win at Arkansas Pine Bluff. He threw scoring passes of nine, 34, 64, 22 and 4 as he led the Panthers to touchdown drives on seven of the first eight full drives in the game. It was Green's second career 400-yard passing game in leading the Panthers to their highest scoring game (57), highest passing yards total (400), and highest total yards output of the season (552).
 
McCray (5-11, 230, R-JR;  North Kissimmee, Fla.) rushed 10 times for 62 yards and two touchdowns in the Panthers' win at Arkansas-Pine Bluff. McCray scored on runs of 13 and one yard in the second half to put the game away for Prairie View A&M.
 
PVAMU Head Coach Willie Simmons addressed the media on the SWAC Football Head Coaches Weekly teleconference.
 
"We ended the season on a positive note," Simmons said. "We went out and played probably our most complete game of the season against Arkansas-Pine Bluff. We had our highest offensive output of the season, and two guys recognized by the conference…We did a good job of playing all three phases. The defense kept them out of the end zone. Their one score came on a kick return, so the defense did a really good job. Besides from the kickoff return they gave up late, I thought the special teams did a pretty good job."
 
Despite the great individual performances as part of the most complete performance of the season by the Panthers, it was not enough to earn an FCS Playoff berth for the second year in a row. PVAMU football has posted back-to-back seasons of 8-2 and 7-4 overall, including 8-1 and 7-2 finishes in Southwestern Athletic Conference play.
 
"We went into the game hoping that win would be enough to give us an at-large playoff berth. That didn't happen," said Simmons. "We're extremely disappointed in that, being it's the second year in a row we felt we've fielded a team that did enough on the field to warrant an at-large bid. But, as it was last year, that's part of it, and we want to continue to grow the program in a manner that we're not depending on someone else to control our destiny, that we're controlling our own destiny by winning games on the field. That's something that we're pledged to do here."
 
Now that the season is over, the preparation for 2017 takes center stage, as coaches start to hit the road in earnest looking ahead to the future.
 
"Recruiting is a large part of that (program building and success)," Simmons said. "That's where our focus has shifted now, as we hit the road recruiting to try and improve our talent level and depth at a lot of positions to move forward to be able to finish some of the games that we weren't able to this year like Grambling and Southern.  All in all, I'm proud of the young guys and the way they competed, and their ability to fight back all year long, their resilience, their ability to overcome adversity and stay together is something that I'm proud of."
 
A hot topic of Simmons' time on the call was spent addressing not being selected for the FCS Playoffs. After last year's playoff bid was hurt by the University of Faith game, as it was determined to be a non-countable game by the NCAA based on UF not meeting certain criteria, the Panthers improved the strength of schedule with a pair of FBS teams (Texas A&M, Rice) along with nine-game league schedule. PVAMU's only losses were to the two FBS opponents and current SWAC West Division co-leaders Grambling and Southern.
 
"We increased our strength of schedule, and of course had to go through a nine-game conference schedule where we lost two games to two teams who haven't lost a game to an FCS team all year," Simmons said. "Grambling is ranked in the Top 25 in FCS football, and Southern warrants that, to be ranked. We felt we had done enough on the field, beat some really good teams, and played really well against Rice, scored 44 points on them and almost 500 yards to say, in looking at our body of work over the course of two years, we warranted a bid.
 
"A lot of teams get in the playoffs based on reputation. Last year there was a 6-5 team that got in. This year there was a 6-5 team that got in just because of the conference they are in. We feel like right now the SWAC right now is not getting the respect that we deserve. I'll put a lot of (SWAC) teams up against any playoff team right now and we'd definitely give them a handful. It's extremely disappointing. Again, we feel like we're a good enough team to do that, and go into the playoffs, but it's out of our control. We have to keep working to get better and hopefully in the future not put ourselves in the situation where two years in a row we've had to wait on a committee to let us in, as opposed to representing our conference in the SWAC Championship."
 

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