[5] He had to drop triple jumping due to knee problems, but started dabbling in the sprints instead; at the NCAA championships he ran the second leg on the Razorbacks' 4 × 100 m relay team, which placed fifth.

[5] Outdoors, he failed to qualify for the NCAA meet individually, but placed second behind Jeff Henderson at the national championships two weeks later.

[5] In 2015 Lawson became an individual-event doubler again, as he started running the individual 100 meters; he broke the Arkansas school record in the NCAA championship semi-finals with 10.04 (+1.7 m/s), and placed third with a wind-aided 9.90 (+2.7 m/s) in the final.

His individual meet score of 31.5 points, including partial credit for Arkansas' third place in the 4 × 100 m relay, was also the best since Owens.

[9][10][note 1] In the long jump, Lawson took the lead in round four and secured first place with his fifth-round leap of 8.15 m (26 ft 8+3⁄4 in).

[10] He narrowly defeated Tennessee's Christian Coleman in both sprints, running 10.22 (-2.3 m/s) in the 100 meters and 20.19 (-0.2 m/s) in the longer race; LSU's Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake led the 200-meter semi-finals ahead of Lawson, but lost his chances after suffering a cramp in the relay.