Southeast football team focuses on eliminating big plays

Seeing his team give up 75- and 49-yard touchdowns on Saturday in a 44-41 loss to Murray State was difficult enough for Southeast Missouri State coach Tom Matukewicz.

Add that to the fact that those two huge plays happened on third down and it's even more unbearable.

"Both of those plays happened on third down, which is just hard to watch," Matukewicz said following Tuesday's practice at Houck Stadium. "We just have to play smarter. In that situation they were pressed and they shouldn't have been pressed. That's just a deal where we've got to take that off the film."

MSU sophomore quarterback's KD Humphrie's second touchdown pass of the game was a 75-yarder to Janawksi Davis, who was wide open behind the defense. The touchdown came just 50 seconds after Southeast took its first lead of the game and put the Racers back ahead 14-10.

And 55 seconds into the second half, Humphries hit Nevar Griffin with a 49-yard pass on third-and-7 to put the Racers up 21-13.

The Redhawks expected Humphries, who leads the conference in passing average per game, to throw the ball often, but struggles arose because of the Racers' quick tempo.

"It's that split second," Matukewicz said. "If you have 30 seconds to decide, you know [whether or not to press your man], but all of a sudden they're getting lined up and that's when you make that mistake.

"That's really the key -- that final thing that I think it takes to win on Saturdays. We talk about play hard, play smart, play together. No one's playing harder and I feel like we're as close as any team I've ever been around, but the smart thing ... the penalties, bad snaps, a false start, a blown assignment, those are the things preventing us from playing as well as we could be playing."

Southeast's pass defense is statistically the worst in the league through its first three Ohio Valley Conference games.

OVC opponents have averaged 336.3 yards passing per game against the Redhawks and thrown for 11 touchdowns.

Six of those came at the hand of Humphries, who was named the OVC Offensive Player of the Week as well as the National Co-Offensive Player of the Week by Sports Network and National Offensive All-Star of the Week by the College Sporting News.

"You can't look in the backfield, can't look in the stands, you've got to focus on your guy," said sophomore safety Eriq Moore, who picked off Humphries in the first quarter. "A couple of times we didn't really do that, and that's how a lot of big plays started to really happen. They've got good athletes, and with one little mess-up they can make you pay, that's for sure."

Senior cornerback Reggie Jennings noted he and his teammates have extra incentive to focus on their receiver.

"Coach Tuke's definitely thrown the gassers thing out there at us," Jennings said with a laugh. "He said every time you take your eye off your man that might be a gasser, so that's always in the back of our head, and I'm making sure my eyes are on my guy at all times."

While the focus continues to be on limiting big offensive plays, the Redhawks will emphasize stopping the run Saturday against Eastern Illinois.

Southeast has the conference's third-best rushing defense through its three conference games, holding opponents to 156.3 yards per game and just one rushing touchdown.

The Racers rushed for 162 yards against Southeast after averaging 118.5 in their first two OVC games.

EIU will bring the OVC's top rushing offense, averaging 341.5 yards in two OVC games, to Houck.

"We didn't do as good of a job last week as we could and it had to do a lot with our personnel," Matukewicz said. "This week we won't be in the game if we don't stop the run.