COLUMN: Lopsided Southeast football victory important to build on

The Southeast Missouri State football team's season opener featured an anti-climatic drubbing of an overmatched team from a lower division of college football.

While there probably isn't much to glean about what this season holds for the Redhawks from their 77-0 win over Missouri Baptist -- an NAIA team playing its first football game ever -- on Thursday night at Houck Stadium, drubbing an opponent from a lower division has hardly been a given for Southeast in recent seasons.

So while Thursday night's win in front of 7,143 fans shouldn't be oversold as a monumental victory, no matter how lopsided the final score, it shouldn't be taken for granted either.

I asked first-year coach Tom Matukewicz if he thought there was more value in a lopsided win than a loss against a larger school to open the season.

"Absolutely," he said. "If Coach Tuke was in charge of scheduling, which he's not, we open up here because I just really like that. ... I'm a positive guy as it is -- if we're going to go somewhere just to pay bills to open up, I don't like that, you know what I'm saying? That's not an excuse, we're going to still bring it. But if I had my druthers it would be just like tonight, whether it was a 1-AA or a different type of opponent."

The Redhawks will have a pay-the-bills type of game next weekend when they travel to Kansas for a game against the Big 12 bottom-dwellers, who will pay Southeast for the opportunity to host the Redhawks in a non-conference matchup.

Junior wide receiver Paul McRoberts is familiar with being treated like an overmatched underdog and said he and his teammates avoided thinking about Missouri Baptist in that way.

"Teams look down on us, so it's like we can't afford to look down on anybody because nobody's perfect and the only thing you can do is work hard," McRoberts said.

A year ago, the Redhawks got one of their three wins against Division II Urbana University (Ohio) in a 37-35 come-from-behind win in front of 1,249 fans.

The year before that, Southeast defeated Division II Mars Hill College 38-18 at home in its second game of the season. Mars Hill eventually finished the season 6-4.

The Redhawks beat NAIA Central Methodist 55-44 at home in 2011. And in 2010, their OVC championship season, they defeated Division II Southwest Baptist 40-14 after leading just 27-14 at halftime.

The last time Southeast put on a display similar to the one we saw Thursday night was in 2009, when it defeated Division II Quincy University 72-3 in the season opener at home. That was the last time the Redhawks won their first game of the season.

That's a cautionary tale, however. The 2009 Redhawks lost their next eight games and finished 2-9.

"This one right here is just the start of greatness," McRoberts said. "We're going to take this and we ain't going to let it get to our head. We're going to keep working hard. We see that we all bought in."

Matukewicz made a similar point, suggesting the win isn't quite as important as what the Redhawks do with it moving forward. He said there is no in-season time for improvement more significant than the time between the first and second games of the season.

"This is the jump. This is the chase," Matukewicz said. "... How much better can we get from now to KU? That's a race, and we've got to do a great job of not thinking, 'Boy, we're like the greatest thing ever, right?' I do a pretty good job of making sure they don't think that, you know what I'm saying, and making sure we do just what we did up to this week and handling the process and detailing what it is we've got to get better at."

We will almost certainly get to see how well this Southeast football team responds to adversity multiple times over the course of this season. But for now, the question is how they will handle a taste of success.

"We'll find out a lot about our team tonight," Matukewicz said. "How do you handle success? An average team -- they think they deserve to go out and get drunk tonight and go celebrate. But that's not what winners do. Winning is extremely hard. That's why not a lot of people can have it. It's not complicated, it's just hard. You have to make really hard decisions and you've got to take care of yourself and not be like every other college student and go downtown and do all those types of things. You've got to hydrate, you've got to sleep, you've got to eat, you've got to take care of yourself because this is over. We've got to go to the next one. And so I'll have a good idea about my football team tomorrow at weigh-in."