STARKVILLE, Miss. (AP) — Alabama's Keelon Russell stepped up to avoid pass rushers on third-and-19, kept his eyes downfield as he began to run and suddenly unloaded a 39-yard completion to Lotzeir Brooks.
“He’s always looking for the big play,” Alabama receiver Rico Scott said. “You just got to be ready.”
Russell might have looked like a 19-year-old, first-year starter when he committed three turnovers at Kentucky in Week 2, but not on Saturday at Mississippi State, where he was surgical on third down and avoided turnovers entirely in a 56-23 victory for the seventh-ranked Crimson Tide.
“He’s always had the ability to make plays and it was just a matter of him balancing that with taking care of the football and you just know that there’s a matter of growth process that he has to go through," Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer said.
“He can make people miss and he’s just doing a good job of how to move the chains when he needs to with his legs," DeBoer added. ”He always has kept his eyes downfield.”
Russell completed six of his seven third-down passes for 146 yards, including connections of 50 yards to Brooks and 22 yards to Ryan Coleman-Williams. He also threw two of his three touchdown passes on third down.
“He surprises a lot of people. He seems to surprise us some times,” said Scott, who caught third-down, touchdown passes of 13 and 8 yards at Mississippi State.. “It’s just hard to believe how fast he’s grown.”
Russell's already burgeoning Heisman Trophy credentials are bound to be further enhanced by his performance against the No. 16 Bulldogs.
He finished 16 of 22 (73%) for 285 yards and three TDs passing to go with a 17-yard scoring run.
He was asked about his potential to win college football's most coveted individual award after he emerged from the visitor's locker room at Davis Wade Stadium, where he'd also faced down the din cause by cowbell-ringing fans with the poise of a more experienced player.
But the dual-threat Russell sounded more interested in talking about his focus on learning how to play his position better.
“A lot of people will say, ‘He’s a great athlete,’ or, ‘He’s a great player,’" Russell said of the comments he hears about himself. "Becoming more of a quarterback is what I kind of want to be faithful to and just growing there.”
As far as Mississippi State coach Jeff Lebby was concerned, Russell already is playing his position at an “elite level.”
“He’s really accurate, got great anticipation and you continue to see him make big plays with his feet,” Lebby said, calling Russell's, 39-yard completion to Brooks a “backbreaking” play.
“We’ve got a little momentum back in the game. He moves around, throws a shot and they pick up a huge first down,” Lebby recalled. "That’s what he can continue to do for them — a guy that’s playing really, really well for a guy so young.”
Russell said he learned a lot from his mistakes against Kentucky, which Alabama still beat going away, 45-17 after trailing at halftime. DeBoer agreed.
“He’s trusting himself. He’s got a good vibe with the skill group, throwing on time," DeBoer said. "He continues to take care of the football, making good decisions, run or pass, understanding how to convert and move the chains, knowing when the ball needs to get in the end zone.”
Sign up for Top 25 poll alerts here, visit the Top 25 here and see AP’s full college football coverage here
Alabama quarterback Keelon Russell (12) runs for a touchdown against Mississippi State during the first half of an NCAA college football game in Starkville, Miss., Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/James Pugh)
Alabama wide receiver Ryan Coleman-Williams (1) reacts to his touchdown with Alabama quarterback Keelon Russell (12) against Mississippi State during the first half of an NCAA college football game in Starkville, Miss., Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/James Pugh)
An intense, public outcry over a woman's account of being gang-raped at a Cornell University fraternity house prompted New York's governor this week to angrily yank control of the investigation away from the local prosecutor who didn't initially see what happened as a crime.
Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten has said Cornell police omitted key information that could have affected his decision whether or not to pursue criminal charges.
Now, the task of unraveling the case will fall to the state's attorney general, Letitia James, who was appointed as a special prosecutor.
James, a Democrat best known for tangling with President Donald Trump, suggested at a news conference Friday that her investigation wouldn't be rushed. She described it as a monthslong process, with no predetermined outcome.
Here’s what we know and don’t know about the woman's allegations and the investigations that followed:
The woman sued Cornell and seven former students last month, alleging she was given ketamine and became completely incapacitated while members of the Chi Phi fraternity sexually assaulted her at their campus residence in October 2024.
She reported the alleged assault to campus police about three weeks later, giving investigators a detailed account over two days. She also spoke with Cornell’s disciplinary investigators.
But Van Houten quickly declined to pursue charges or further investigation after reviewing a police summary of her interview.
After the victim filed her civil suit, Van Houten said it contained allegations he had never seen. He contended Cornell’s police had withheld key information, including a transcript of the woman’s interview where she explicitly said she was “100% confident” she was raped.
Van Houten said the materials suggested she had consented to some sex with multiple men, hadn't been forced into other acts, and was intoxicated, but not to the point of helplessness.
Under New York law, being too drunk or high to consent to sex isn’t necessarily enough to support a rape charge. The law distinguishes that from being physically helpless or incapacitated by drugs administered without consent.
Van Houten later reopened the investigation. “Seeking justice sometimes requires us to reconsider or reopen cases when we are provided with additional evidence,” he said.
Only a fraction of the evidence collected by the school has become public, but the portions that have provided a fuller — though disputed — timeline of events, as well as a glimpse at how the men responded to being accused.
According to the records, the woman had been invited to the fraternity by a member for whom she had long held strong romantic feelings. Cornell's disciplinary panel found that she initially consented to sex with that man and one of his friends, though she later alleged in her lawsuit that she had been pressured into taking drugs and alcohol and was too intoxicated to consent.
Later, other men started coming into the room, some drawn by a message one of the fraternity brothers sent to a Snapchat group at 1:42 a.m. using a vulgar term to advertise that a woman’s body was freely available.
The woman told investigators that her intoxication had rendered her partly defenseless. She said some of the men inhaled drugs off her unclothed body.
“I felt like bait. I felt like lions around me. It just was a totally debilitating place to be in,” she told investigators.
The records also show that she acknowledged that her memory of the night was spotty, due to her extreme inebriation, and had verbally acquiesced to some acts she later felt were sexual abuse.
Some of the accused men disputed her account when speaking to investigators, or said that the drug use and sexual activity were consensual.
Cornell hasn’t detailed the results of its investigation, but said it resulted in some students being expelled. The records show it also cleared at least some of the men of sexual assault allegations.
Hochul said she appointed James because she had lost faith in Van Houten's handling of the case. She said Van Houten should have asked Cornell for more information and interviewed the woman before closing it.
“This woman, this young woman, had already endured something that is utterly unspeakable,” she said. “And then at every turn, she was failed by people and institutions with an obligation to protect her.”
Van Houten said he supports James’ appointment but maintains that New York law didn’t allow him to prosecute based solely on the woman’s allegations that she was too incapacitated to consent.
At a Cornell Student Assembly meeting Thursday, students and other members of the university community spent more than 2 1/2 hours discussing the handling of sexual assault allegations. Some expressed fear, anger, and grief — while others shared their own experiences of sexual violence on campus.
Among them was Jane Wang, who said she had reported being sexually assaulted at Cornell a year earlier.
When she filed her Title IX case in the midst of “mental, physical and emotional recovery from the assault,” she said, “I was also met with an abundance of paperwork, very little instruction on how to navigate it and no follow-up from our Title IX office of an outcome.”
The presidents of every fraternity in Cornell’s Interfraternity Council voted unanimously to cancel social events this weekend in response to the allegations, according to The Cornell Daily Sun. Twenty student organizations are also planning a protest Monday to voice support for a promised independent review of Cornell’s handling of the case and advocate changes to its sexual assault policies, the newspaper reported.
In a video message Saturday, Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff pledged greater transparency amid the mounting outrage about how the school handled the case. He called the gang rape allegations “deeply disturbing” and said the case would weigh on the university for years to come.
The case has also renewed scrutiny of a New York sexual assault law that makes it more difficult to prosecute cases involving people too intoxicated to consent. New York is one of 19 states with such laws.
Hochul said Friday that she supports changing the law.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul speaks during a news conference, Friday, Oct. 2, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
