Redhawks face tough road

I wrote last week that, as Southeast Missouri State's football season appeared to be fast slipping away, the Redhawks needed to take care of Austin Peay on homecoming or things could get ugly.

Saturday's events at Houck Stadium probably classify as mighty ugly to Southeast fans who entered the year hoping for a breakthrough campaign.

What looked like a vulnerable Austin Peay team totally dominated Southeast statistically and outscored the Redhawks 21-0 in the fourth quarter to pull away for a 24-14 victory.

So what appeared to be another winnable game for the Redhawks goes by the boards as they suffered their fifth straight loss, falling to 1-5 overall and 0-4 in Ohio Valley Conference play.

While it might be easy for people to say Southeast could have won the game -- you can pretty much make that argument in any contest that isn't a blowout -- Austin Peay certainly deserved to come out on top.

The Govs, who broke a four-game losing streak, piled up 418 yards -- a whopping 325 on the ground -- and held Southeast to a season-low 154 yards.

Southeast was outgained 257 to 22 in the second half, when Austin Peay held the ball 23 of 30 minutes and had 47 offensive plays to just 19 for the Redhawks.

That, folks, is domination.

Only three interceptions by Jake Ryan -- a redshirt freshman who had thrown two collegiate passes before Saturday and was making his first start -- likely kept the Govs from breaking things open earlier.

So where do the Redhawks, who seem to be regressing in performance, go from here?

Suffice to say the road only appears to get tougher.

Southeast will be heavy underdogs at Eastern Kentucky on Oct. 31, against Jacksonville State on Nov. 7 and against SIU on Nov. 21.

That leaves apparently winnable games at Tennessee Tech on Oct. 24 and against Murray State on Nov. 14 (Southeast has an open date this week).

So barring a significant upset, the Redhawks' best-case scenario has them finishing 3-8.

And that's if Southeast is fortunate, because right now 2-9 or even 1-10 isn't out of the question either.

Ugly, indeed.

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I was surprised Tennessee State won at Eastern Kentucky on Saturday, handing the Colonels their first OVC loss and putting the Tigers atop the league standings.

What gives the Tigers a better path than usual to a possible OVC title is that they don't play Jacksonville State this year due to all their classic games against other historically black universities.

Jacksonville State, ineligible for the conference crown because of NCAA Academic Progress Rate shortcomings, has blown away its first two OVC opponents and appears to be the class of the conference.

Tennessee State still has tough games left, but avoiding the Gamecocks is a definite plus for the Tigers.

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Former Southeast football player Mike Williamson, a wide receiver who completed his eligibility in 2008, is a graduate assistant coach at Missouri.

I ran into Williams at a recent Southeast football practice -- he was in town visiting friends during MU's bye week -- and he told me he's having a blast being a part of such a big-time program as he takes graduate classes and tries to learn as much as he can about the coaching profession.

Unfortunately for Williams and the Tigers, they suffered their first loss of the season Thursday night as Nebraska rallied from a 12-0 fourth-quarter deficit to prevail 27-12.

That began a rugged stretch of games for the Tigers that has them visiting Oklahoma State on Saturday and hosting Texas the following week.

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Carl "Ben" Bidewell, a longtime Poplar Bluff resident who played on Southeast's 1942-1943 NAIA national championship basketball team, recently passed away at age 87.

Jack Behrens, a Cape Girardeau native who still resides in the community, hit the winning shot in that season's national championship game. He told me that Bidewell, like Behrens a first-team all-conference selection, was quite a player and person.

The entire 1942-43 squad was part of the inaugural induction class of Southeast's Athletic Hall of Fame in 2002.

One of Bidewell's sons, Jim, is the longtime basketball coach at Portageville High School who led the Bulldogs to four consecutive state titles from 1991 through 1994.

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Southeast basketball fans, get ready.

Official practice begins Friday, and the first regular-season game is only about a month after that.

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What a disappointing performance by the Cardinals, who entered the playoffs considered favorites by many to reach the World Series but fizzled out in an NLDS sweep at the hands of the Dodgers.

Marty Mishow is a sports writer for the Southeast Missourian.