COACH'S CORNER: TENNESSEE ST. HAD TOO MUCH FOR SOUTHEAST

Needless to say, our return to Houck Stadium last Saturday after two strong road performances did not go as planned.

Tennessee State capitalized and seized the momentum of the game in the second quarter and handed our Southeast Missouri State football team a 38-7 defeat.

TSU deserves credit for being talented and creating a wide-open scheme to showcase their talents. They are much improved over the last two years and have had some success coupled with much less humility. Nobody cares for a "whippin" and then getting told about the obvious when finished.

Our team played hard but was kept off balance. We were more responsible for the second quarter momentum shift by simple lack of fundamental execution. TSU took advantage of our miscues on a big play for a touchdown and a turnover that led to a touchdown. All of this occurred just a few minutes before halftime to give the Tigers an 18-7 lead.

Riki Smith scored on our first possession of the game on a 64-yard run. We had TSU on its heels most of the first quarter. We did have a turnover that led to a score by the Tigers but blocked the extra point and maintained a 7-6 lead.

We overcame a missed fourth-down play with an interception by Brian Hinton. Even down 18-7 at halftime, our team has proven over the last few weeks that we are a 60-minute team of character and belief and are never out of the game until the end.

We came out in the second half and TSU again kept us off balance and scored 20 unanswered points. I feel our players continued to play hard. We met up with a pretty good team and in my opinion threw fire on an open flame, allowing them to explode.

Any loss is extremely tough, as this one was. We must shake it off, learn and prepare for an old MIAA rival in Southwest Missouri State.

Our players believed that we may have been in the mix of the Ohio Valley Conference, with everybody knocking each other off. That may be more difficult now, since we have three league losses.

However, the opportunity to turn last year's 4-7 record into 7-4 is still there and would serve as a tremendous turnaround and accomplishment, especially for our seniors to leave behind for our program. It will be a matter of faith, preparation and execution.

In order to pull off that turnaround and go 7-4, we will have to win our last four games against some extremely tough competition. But our players believe that it can be done.

We look forward to getting on the bus again for Saturday's game against Southwest Missouri in Springfield. We have played very well on the road so far this year and look for that to continue.

The Bears have an excellent atmosphere to play in. It will be their homecoming and gives us the opportunity to play the role of spoiler. There should be a good crowd that enjoys the atmosphere of college football. Our players will enjoy it, feed off of it and come back with a win.

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