Southeast Missouri State football team topples another ranked opponent

Southeast Missouri State football coach Tom Matukewicz has made it a point to create more traditions during his first year in charge of the Redhawks.

The latest tradition comes on the heels of the Redhawks 28-21 defeat of No. 20 Tennessee State at Houck Stadium on Saturday.

Southeast defeated then-No. 3 Southeastern Louisiana on Sept. 19 at Houck Stadium, and Saturday's Homecoming victory marked the first time in the program's history that its defeated two ranked opponents in the same year.

"What we're going to do is we're going to make a brick of every Top 25 victory and bury it in our practice field because that's what happens -- their dreams come to die here at Houck." said Matukewicz, who has repeatedly said the prgram will be rebuilt "brick by brick."

Matukewicz said the area where the bricks are buried will serve as a graveyard of sorts, one the team will call the "brickyard."

Southeast improved to 4-2, surpassing its win total from each of the past three seasons, and is 2-0 in the Ohio Valley Conference.

The Redhawks, whose rebuilding project is looking more like a polished one with each passing week, never trailed against one of the nation's best defensive teams, but the Tigers drove to the Southeast 27-yard line with a chance to tie the game in the final two minutes before sophomore safety Eriq Moore intercepted a TSU pass thrown directly at him with 1:01 remaining to all but seal the victory.

Southeast, which traditionally wastes little time on offense anyway, cranked up the tempo early in the game, which helped the Redhawks establish an early lead.

"Keep the ball moving, keep us moving, keep us going," senior running back Lennies McFerren said. "Or lining up so they wouldn't be in the same D. We just kept going our tempo, our tempo, and they couldn't stop it so we just kept doing it. Once they got tired, we just kept punching it. That was our game plan -- keep pushing it, get them off guard."

The Southeast defense forced a three-and-out to start the game and sophomore kicker Ryan McCrum made a career-long 55-yard field goal to put the Redhawks up 3-0 just 2 minutes, 43 seconds into the game.

After another three-and-out for TSU, the Redhawks took the ball 59 yards on a seven-play drive that ended in a 6-yard touchdown run by quarterback Kyle Snyder to give Southeast a 10-0 lead with 8:56 left in the first quarter.

The Tigers moved the ball to the Southeast 8-yard line on their next posession, but a 25-yard field goal attempt by freshman kicker Lane Clark was blocked by senior cornerback Tim Hamm-Bey to keep TSU off the board with 6:02 left in the first and signal the start of night of kicking problems for the Tigers.

Southeast Missouri State's Spencer Davis returns the kickoff by Tennessee State during the second quarter Saturday, Oct. 4, 2014 at Houck Stadium. (Fred Lynch)

"Just right away in that first team meeting I was like, 'Hey, we have better specialists. We have a better punter, a better kicker. We have to win that part of the game,'" Matukewicz said. "Just like blocking that field goal -- it was everybody buying into that concept. That's the thing you try to tell them. You don't hear about these four or five guys that their only snaps are on kickoff, but they have just as much to do with winning and losing as the guy that played 60. They all have a job. Do your job as good as you can do. What's good is that I feel like our kids are buying in to their roles."

The Tigers got it to the Redhawks' 8 again in the second quarter, but Clark's 25-yard field goal went wide right with 12:16 left in the first half.

After that it took 3:19 for the Redhawks to go 80 yards and finish with a 1-yard touchdown run by junior running back Lewis Washington that made it a 17-0 game.

However, Southeast's next two possessions of the second quarter and its first two possessions of the third quarter ended with punts as the TSU defense began to decode the Redhawks offense.

"We had some tempo stuff and they kind of got that fixed, and so we had to find something else and find something else," Matukewicz said. "We were just trying to stay one step ahead of them, but they did a good job. They fixed the issues that they were having at first, so we kept trying to go to the drawing board a bit, and I may have said, 'Hey, just run the ball a little bit the defense needs to get a rest here. A lot goes in to each and every drive."

Meanwhile the Tigers scored on a 2-yard run by Stephen Hopkins with 14 seconds left in the first half to pull within 17-7. The Tigers had fumbled twice but recovered both on the drive and scored on fourth down.

Clark missed his third field goal attempt of the game -- a 34-yarder that went wide right -- with 10:30 to go in the third.

"The one that they blocked was just poor protection," TSU coach Rod Reed said. "The other two, you've got a freshman kicker. We had this four or five years ago when we had Jamon Godfrey. He ended up being our all-time leading scorer. They're going through some growing pains, but they've got to be able to kick the ball under pressure. It's just that simple. I'm not making an excuse because he's a freshman. If he's out there he has a job to do, and we expect him to do it, so we'll go back to competition again at the kicking position and see who wants it."

TSU quarterback Mike German moved the offense down the field 75 yards on eight plays on its next drive that resulted in a 10-yard touchdown pass to Chris Sanders-McCollum to pull the Tigers within three with 3:18 left in the third.

McCrum made a 26-yard field goal three minutes into the fourth quarter, and after the defense put TSU in a fourth-and-12 situation the Tigers punted.

Southeast Missouri State's Lennies McFerren leaves Tennessee State's Nick Thrasher behind to score the last touchdown of the fourth quarter Saturday, Oct. 4, 2014 at Houck Stadium. (Fred Lynch)

Southeast's next drive consisted of 10 running plays between Brendan Stewart, McFerren and Snyder. The Redhawks took more than six minutes off the clock and McFerren finished it with a 7-yard touchdown run. Snyder completed a pass to Ron Coleman for the two-point conversion to give Southeast a two touchdown lead.

TSU answered with a 2-yard touchdown pass from German to Weldon Garlington with 2:11 remaining to pull within seven. Southeast punted on its next drive after recovering an onside kick before Moore's interception.

Snyder completed 11 of 18 passes for 134 yards while German completed 34 of 59 for 362 yards and two touchdowns as well as an interception.

McFerren finished with a career-high 115 yards rushing and a touchdown on 21 carries.

The Redhawks could break into the FCS Top 25 polls after their third-straight win. They received 72 votes in the Sports Network FCS Top 25, which made them the fifth-highest team that received votes that was not in the Top 25.

"The joy a locker room has when they sacrifice and work for a common goal, you just can't even explain it," Matukewicz said of his team's reaction to finding out it was the first time in program history the Redhawks defeated two ranked teams in a year. "You're so proud to be apart of it. The only thing I'm concerned about is I gave them two days off and they celebrated even harder."