COLUMN: Lack of discipline, not loss cause concern for Southeast football team

Welcome to the Southeast Missouri State football season, Adversity. We've been waiting for you for quite some time.

After months of positive build up to the season under a new coaching staff, a fun-filled lopsided victory in their first game of the season and a hard-fought loss on FBS opponent Kansas' home field last week that left both plenty to brag about and plenty to work on, the Redhawks had their first significant public brush with "adversity" -- a term adored by coaches for its ability to sweep so many problems under one rug.

Southeast's 50-23 loss to nationally-ranked Southern Illinois on Saturday night wasn't -- on its own -- cause for concern. How the Redhawks lost was.

For the second week in a row Southeast was plagued by turnovers and penalties --many of which were avoidable.

First-year coach Tom Matukewicz said after the game that it was time to stop talking about correcting the mistakes -- they're either allowed or they are not.

"There's just a lot of 'news,'" Matukewicz said. "There's new stuff that pops up because it's a new offense, new staff and all those things. At the end of the day, those are all excuses. We have to do a better job, and it starts with me. It starts tomorrow. Everything that happened today I feel like we can get corrected."

Southeast turned the ball over five times -- four on fumbles and one on an interception -- leading to four SIU touchdowns. The Redhawks committed 12 penalties -- two of which were called on the sideline -- for 88 yards and gifted the Salukies three first downs in the process. They allowed an average of 21 yards on kickoff returns and were 3 of 11 on third-down conversion opportunities.

"It hurts a lot worse when you make a lot of the mistakes that you made," Matukewicz said. "If you just get beat, it's one thing, but when you make the mistakes that we made tonight -- those are just hard to deal with."

The four "pillars" of Matukewicz's program are attitude, effort, discipline and passion, and one was noticeably missing.

"If you don't have discipline, you have nothing," Matukewicz said. "Just watch the game. We have all kinds of things we can do on offense and good players on defense, but at the end of the day, if you don't have discipline, you have nothing. You give a guy a million dollars and he lives an undisciplined lifestyle, in a year he's got a bunch of problems.

"We have to do a better job with discipline. That's not something I can sprinkle fairy dust on and watch it get better. We've got to go put them in those critical situations, turn the heat up and make them execute under pressure."

Yes, SIU was the better football team in pretty much every area Saturday night and deserves plenty of credit for the final score. Yes, the Salukis have more talent on their roster, a fancier stadium to play in and a better history of program success.

Yes, as I've written, Matukewicz deserves time to build his program, recruit his talent and install his brand of football before he's expected to beat nationally-ranked teams on the road.

No, none of that excuses a drive that features four penalties -- holding, holding, false start and an illegal receiver downfield -- like the Redhawks had in the abysmal first quarter and plenty of other things we saw Saturday night.

Matukewicz understands that. I think the players understand that. The challenge is taking what they understand and turning it into what they can execute.

"I still feel good," Matukewicz said. "If you're in that locker room, that's not a defeated team. That's a team that is a little upset, as they should be, but it's a good kind of upset. They want to get to practice tomorrow and get to work on trying to get it fixed."

Quarterback Kyle Snyder, who had the most difficult night of any Redhawk, was confident he knew how his team would reply to their meeting with adversity.

"I know how it's going to be," Snyder said. "It's going to be in a positive manner -- going in to film tomorrow and correcting things and just getting prepared next week for [Southeastern Louisiana]."