COACH'S CORNER: AFTER OPENING WIN, INDIANS GEAR FOR ISU

Many thanks to those who stayed with us until the end of our 23-18 season-opening win over Truman State last Thursday.

As stated in the week prior to the game, too often we categorize teams by their label (i.e., Division II or Division III).

Truman State is a very well-coached and hard-nosed football team. They have a winning tradition and playoff experience. They showed all of that.

The Bulldogs proved to be a pesky challenge to our team as they never gave up. They did a great job in their play selection and swarmed on defense.

As for our team, the bottom line is that we won, although we are not pleased with the way we won.

Offensively, at times we looked unstoppable and at times we couldn't get going. In all, the offensive line played very well and handled a great deal of blitzing by Truman.

Corey Williams ran extremely hard, scored three touchdowns and is one of the leading scorers in the nation after one game. Many receivers caught passes as our quarterbacks spread the ball around well.

Fortunately, Britt Mirgaux's knee injury was not as bad as suspected and he should return sooner than anticipated.

As stated earlier, we looked very sharp offensively on our scoring drives and had enough poise to convert three fourth-down situations. We must execute more consistently throughout the course of the game.

Defensively, we played extremely hard and created five turnovers. Marcus McClellan and Troy Bagglio made big plays. Our secondary covered well for the most part. Truman completed two TD passes that were covered well but the passes were perfect.

We rose on a couple of occasions on the goal line to force field goals in key situations. We must clean up our penalties on defense as several kept Truman scoring drives alive. The penalties were of the effort variety, but still costly.

Our special teams played well. I must note that Corey Chester and the kickoff return team created excellent field position and especially at the end of the game for our go-ahead score. Corey was told to catch everything and get the fans out of their seats. He did a great job.

Justin Keen, a freshman quarterback from Jackson, was thrust into the punting role during two-a-days and performed very well. He showed great poise in his first college outing.

We now must prepare for an Indiana State team that absorbed a 66-0 defeat from nationally-ranked Kansas State.

The Sycamores are a very good defensive team. The offense has changed to the flexbone. They are still in transition offensively and didn't really get a chance to get going. Indiana State will have more speed than Truman and be very physical.

Like I said, we must clean up our performance from Truman State. It was inconsistent and we can play much better.

On the other hand, and still very importantly, we came back to win the game in an excellent display of faith, execution and competitive toughness. I feel this team showed a lot of poise and grit.

We look forward to a great crowd Saturday night at Houck Stadium.

John Mumford is the head football coach at Southeast Missouri State University