CLEVELAND - On the first play of scrimmage, Winston-Salem State's defense fell flat after Hoderick Lowe had a scintillating 59-yard touchdown run.  From that point forward, the Golden Tigers would fall flat for the rest of the game.

In Tuskegee's 35-13 loss at FirstEnergy Stadium on Saturday, Tuskegee could not stop the powerful offense of the reigning NCAA Division II National Runners-Up.  Winston-Salem State responded to Tuskegee's game opening touchdown (with a missed extra point by Trevor Wylie) with a nine-yard touchdown run by quarterback Rudy Johnson, and the Rams had a lead that they would not surrender for the rest of the game at the 10:15 mark of the opening quarter.

"They were just better than us," said Tuskegee Football Coach Willie Slater.  "We know what we got to do.  We got to get better.  I thought that they had excellent personnel.  Their personnel was better than ours at this point.  But, I did see some really good things on our part.  We just couldn't finish drives for whatever reason, whether it was a bad play, a missed assignment or a penalty.  Penalties killed us, but we are going to get better.  It is our third game, and this has given us something to shoot for.  I think that we have a great group of kids, and they will respond positively."

The Tuskegee defense gave up a total of 467 yards during the game, and the Rams were able to score a touchdown during every quarter of the contest except the second.  Neither team was able to get into the end zone, and the game was still manageable for the Golden Tigers after they went into the locker room trailing by a score of 14-6 at that point.

In the lone bright spot for Tuskegee's offense, Lowe, the true freshman from Grady High School in Atlanta, finished with 11 carries for 111 yards and the game-opening touchdown.  However, quarterback Justin Nared completed just 7-of-20 pass attempts for a grand total of 85 yards.  By comparison, Winston-Salem's Rudy Johnson threw for 211 yards and two touchdowns, while also rushing for 58 yards and two additional scores on the ground.

The key turning point of the game was on Tuskegee's second drive of the game, when a bad snap from the center was recovered by Hoderick Lowe on a second down play with the Golden Tigers driving at the Winston-Salem 21-yard line.  By the time the play was over, Tuskegee had lost 16 yards, and seemingly all of the game's momentum.

"The kids they do respect me, and they know that I don't like mistakes," Slater said.  "Then, we just kind of got down on ourselves and we couldn't recover after that.  We still had a chance after that.  We were hoping that we could get them to come out in the second half and punt after that.  We had a good possession, but they drove it down and scored on us.  That took a bit out of us."

Tuskegee (2-1) will try to recover next week by going to Jackson, Tenn. to open up conference play against a very powerful division foe in Lane College.  Kickoff is set for 2:00 p.m. Central time next Saturday.