Southeast's third-down troubles doom comeback attempt vs. Jacksonville State

Twice the Southeast Missouri State football team pulled itself within 11 points of Ohio Valley Conference champion Jacksonville State on Saturday.

Twice they needed to get off the field on third down in the third quarter to allow their offense a shot at making that margin even smaller.

And twice JSU converted and eventually scored en route to a 49-30 win and an undefeated conference season.

"I felt that Coach Saia did a great job calling the plays defensively on third down, and they just so happened to call the right plays," Southeast senior linebacker Wisler Ymonice said. "Football's a game of chess, so it happens. It's a part of the game. You've just got to learn how to deal with it."

Redhawks' coach Tom Matukewicz said he was disappointed with defense on third down and recalled both instances when his team greatly needed a stop in the third quarter.

The first came on third-and-4 from the Gamecocks 31-yard line. Freshman linebacker Brad Ivey raced straight for JSU quarterback Eli Jenkins, but Jenkins got a pass off just before Ivey brought him to the ground. The pass to receiver Josh Barge went for a 10-yard gain.

Two plays later running back DaMarcus James escaped for a 28-yard run and the Gamecocks scored when Troymaine Pope ran it in untouched for the 18-yard score to push JSU's lead to 35-17 with 7 minutes, 35 seconds remaining in the third quarter.

"Credit to the offense, when they scored the offense came back and scored," Ymonice said. "If we were able to get a couple stops on the defensive end the score would've been a lot closer and it probably would've been in our favor for a victory. But it happens; it's a part of the game, and the clock's over, so you can't really much dwell on it."

The Redhawks scored to pull it back within 11 points on the next drive and then had the Gamecocks in a third-and-9 scenario at JSU's 35 before JSU took a timeout.

Jenkins ran for nine yards on the next play and the first down. The Gamecocks scored when Dalton Screws caught a screen pass and ran it for a 36-yard touchdown that put them ahead 42-24. The Redhawks would never come any closer.

"You'd have them covered, the quarterback would take off, didn't quite have him covered and they'd complete a ball," Matukewicz said. "I think we're in that game if we'd got some of those stops. That was why I'm disappointed. I'm not disappointed necessarily in our scheme or in our players in that situation, but that was the plan. They were going to get yards. They have on everybody. So we weren't going to try to hold them down yardage-wise. We were just going to try to get off the field. You get three more stops, it's a different game, and we weren't able to do that on third down."

The Gamecocks compiled 612 yards of total offense -- 367 on the ground and 245 through the air -- and converted 11 of 16 attempts on third down,

"That's what made them hard to defend," Matukewicz said. "If you've got a quarterback there that can only sling it, well, then you can just bring everybody back there, but we cover everybody and the guy takes off running. We send everybody and then he beats us one-on-one. We just couldn't get it done. They ran the ball too effectively to get more third-and-10s. Most of the time it was third-and-2s and 3s, and you're never going to be good that way."