{"id":393765,"date":"2026-09-08T15:26:27","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T15:26:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/393765\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T15:26:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T15:26:27","slug":"smu-outlasts-fsu-27-24-after-2-hour-delay-for-power-outage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/393765\/","title":{"rendered":"SMU outlasts FSU 27-24 after 2-hour delay for power outage"},"content":{"rendered":"

TALLAHASSEE \u2014\u00a0Kevin Jennings shook off a pair of interceptions to lead No. 19 SMU\u2019s winning scoring drive, capped by Nick Reed\u2019s 20-yard field goal with 21 seconds to play, to wrap up a 27-24 win over Florida State on Monday night.<\/p>\n

Jennings completed 26 of 36 passes for a career-best 430 yards and three touchdowns as SMU (1-0, 1-0 Atlantic Coast Conference) outlasted the Seminoles in a game that was delayed nearly two hours due to a\u00a0power outage\u00a0at Doak Campbell Stadium.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought Kevin played awesome,\u201d SMU coach Rhett Lashlee said. \u201cHe was in control. Threw it for 430, he ran it when he needed to. He\u2019s a player. Really proud of him. Proud of our guys for just finding a way to win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jennings had a 50-yard touchdown pass to Jalen Cooper and a 10-yard touchdown pass to Randy Pittman, a Florida State transfer, to help the Mustangs rack up 585 offensive yards.<\/p>\n

\"FloridaFlorida State running Ousmane Kromah rushed for 120 yards and a touchdown on 22 carries in FSU’s 27-24 loss to SMU on Monday at Doak Campbell Stadium in Tallahassee. (FSU Athletics\/Seminoles.com)<\/p>\n

\u201cGetting the W is amazing,\u201d Jennings said. \u201cIt was a tough crowd environment on the road. Great team. Crowd was going crazy. \u2026 We\u2019ve been preparing since January. It\u2019s nothing new for us. It\u2019s week 1. Mistakes are going to happen. But it\u2019s about how we respond.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ousmane Kromah had 22 carries for 116 yards, including a 54-yarder and a 7-yard touchdown to lead Florida State. Kromah has back-to-back 100-yard games to begin his sophomore season.<\/p>\n

FSU\u2019s Ashton Daniels completed 12 of 23 passes for 125 yards and a 39-yard touchdown pass to Samuel Singleton Jr.<\/p>\n

Daniels also had an 8-yard touchdown run to help Florida State (1-1, 0-1) wrap up a 14-play, 75-yard drive in the first quarter.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got to go make plays in the passing game when opportunities present themselves,\u201d Florida State coach Mike Norvell said. \u201cDidn\u2019t do a good job protecting with that throughout, some inconsistencies there that we got to clean up. We got to get that corrected. \u2026 We had our opportunities. It\u2019s a shame to come up a field goal short.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ashlynd Barker and Nehemiah Chandler had second-half interceptions for Florida State. The Seminoles also forced a muffed punt, which led to a third-quarter touchdown.<\/p>\n

\"AA power outage Monday at Doak Campbell Stadium in Tallahassee plunged much of the facility into darkness just before the Florida State-SMU was about to begin. The game was delayed for nearly two hours. (FSU Athletics\/Seminoles.com)
\nPower outage<\/p>\n

SMU and Florida State were set to kick off at 7:35 p.m. but were instead pushed back to 9:15 p.m. due to the power outage. The game began with referees keeping the time on the field.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe asked them to be calm in the chaos,\u201d Lashlee said. \u201cCouldn\u2019t be more chaotic than the first hour and a half.\u201d<\/p>\n

The power went out just minutes before the scheduled kickoff and the delay lasted about 1 hour, 45 minutes. The teams finally took the field at 9 p.m. EDT for warmups and the game started at 9:15 p.m. under less than ideal conditions.<\/p>\n

Not all the stadium lights were operating and the teams were forced to deal with a number of other issues, including no coach-to-player communication, no iPads on the sidelines, no public address announcer and no scoreboard.<\/p>\n

A statement on the Jumbotron inside the stadium during the delay read: \u201cTechnical staff are addressing a power disruption to the west side tower due to an electrical short in the main transformer. Electricians are working to restore the power service. The game remains suspended. Update to follow.\u201d<\/p>\n

ACC commissioner Jim Phillips chatted with athletic directors from both schools, SMU\u2019s Damon Evans and Florida State\u2019s Michael Alford, for a few minutes on the field before administrators moved inside to further discuss options.<\/p>\n

The highly anticipated finale on Labor Day to the weekend\u2019s first full slate of games was put on hold as a countdown clock inside the stadium stopped at 7:30 p.m. and the stadium lights went out.<\/p>\n

Takeaways<\/p>\n

For SMU, the Mustangs made plenty of opening-game mistakes but converted 8 of 14 third-down opportunities and had two fourth-quarter scoring drives.<\/p>\n

For Florida State, the Seminoles failed to convert on their first 10 third-down attempts, finishing 2 of 15. But Florida State made enough plays on the ground to pick up 177 yards and battle SMU.<\/p>\n

Up next<\/p>\n

SMU will play host to UC Davis on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Florida State has a bye and will play at No. 13 Alabama on Sept. 19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TALLAHASSEE \u2014\u00a0Kevin Jennings shook off a pair of interceptions to lead No. 19 SMU\u2019s winning scoring drive, capped…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[111,28,3731,114,76046,110,232,234,233],"class_list":["post-393765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-college-sports","tag-florida","tag-florida-state-seminoles","tag-latest-headlines","tag-social-sports","tag-sports","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}