Junior kicker Ryan McCrum made his fifth and final field goal attempt of the night from 42 yards out with five seconds left to lead the Southeast Missouri State football team to a 27-24 victory over SIU Carbondale in its home opener on Saturday.
McCrum missed three straight field goals from 42, 38 and 39 yards in the game after scoring the first points of the night with a 39-yard field goal early in the first quarter.
“I really just got out of my rhythm,” McCrum said. “… I felt like I was on during warmups and everything and when I got out there for actual kicks in the game, I felt myself rushing. I felt like I didn’t give myself enough time. I knew our line was going to do their job upfront, I just needed to do mine and I just felt like I was rushing myself.”
Special teams coach Matt Martin spoke to after each of McCrum’s field goal attempts.
“When I talked to Coach Martin after every kick – Coach Martin of course has to come up to me after every single kick on what I did, and he was like, ‘Well, where you aiming?’ I’m like, ‘Down the middle, of course,’” McCrum said.
Martin asked McCrum after that by saying what has he been telling him since he came here, and that is to always aim at the right upright.
“I was like, ‘All right. I’m going to do exactly what you said this time. What happens happens, if you’re right, you’re right.’ Just going out there for that last kick I was thinking, ‘This is for everybody. I’ve let them down this whole game, and it’s time for me to step up and do my job.’
After McCrum made what would be the game-winning kick to secure Southeast’s first victory of the season, he and Martin had another conversation.
“He was like, ‘Well you finally listened to me, didn’t you?’” McCrum said. “‘Yeah, I finally listened to you.’ I’m going to start listening to him more often now.”
It was the first time since 2010, when Southeast won the Ohio Valley Conference Championship, that the Redhawks defeated SIU and did that year by a score of 24-21.
Junior quarterback Tay Bender went a perfect 4 for 4 on the game-winning drive and completed his final pass of the night to senior wide receiver Paul McRoberts for 7 yards to SIU’s 25-yard line.
“That’s why I play football,” Bender said. “We practice each week two-minute and with 38 seconds left, being down by two – goes out to coach [Tom Matukewicz] putting us in those positions every day at practice, so to be honest it felt like practice out there.”
McRoberts caught his first touchdown of the season from Bender, which was Southeast’s only offensive touchdown of the game and the season thus far.
One of the other players who Bender completed a pass to on the final drive was senior running back DeMichael Jackson, who caught the ball for a 14-yard gain on third-and-7 for a first down.
“Before that even happened [catching the pass], I went up to McCrum,” Jackson said. “McCrum — he works so hard. I went up to him and I said, ‘McCrum, you missed those three, so you’re going to win us this game.’ And he said, ‘I got it.’ And he did it. I just did what I was supposed to do. They say big time players make big time plays and I just happened to make the catch, and it was a good pass by Tay.”
Jackson only caught one other pass in the game while he had the majority of the workload on the ground for the Redhawks offense and ran the ball 30 times for 186 rushing yards.
“Me and Tay, our chemistry is great,” Jackson said. “It starts at the line first. Them guys up front, they go so hard every day and they open up everything in practice. So if we go hard in practice, everything’s easier for us in the game. Tay keeps me poised and I keep him poised.”
Southeast’s first touchdown of the game and of the season came in the first quarter from the OVC Co-Defensive Player of the Week sophomore cornerback Michael Ford.
Ford scored the touchdown and earned those honors by intercepting a pass from SIU senior quarterback Mark Iannotti and returning it 21 yards for a touchdown.
Southeast’s defense picked off Iannotti two more times in the game, including when Ford made a leaping catch in the third quarter and kept one foot in bounds to hold onto the interception.
“We were running a cover three, kind of played it off and I was running backwards and I saw the ball and it was in the air, and I see the receiver, too,” Ford said. “I saw him like stop and I’m like, ‘I can make a play on this ball.’ So I just keep running and I saw that it was a little deep, so I just jumped as high as I could and it fell right into my hands. The next step I was like, ‘I’ve got to get a foot in,’ because I saw I was super far to the sideline, so I extended my foot as far as I could and I got the foot in.”
The other Redhawk to intercept a pass from Iannotti, who threw a single game career-high six touchdowns against Southeast last year, was junior cornerback Ryan Moore, who did so in the second quarter.
“I don’t know that people really know how good Mark Iannotti is,” Matukewicz said. “He is a really good player. Statistically — we won’t face another quarterback like him.”
Matukewicz went on to say that pressure and disguises his defense threw at Iannotti caused helped hold him to three touchdowns, two passing and one rushing, while being picked off three times.
“He’s a really good football player, and I just think [defensive coordinator] Coach [Bryce] Saia and the defensive coaches did a good job preparing our defense,” Matukewicz said.
Junior strong safety Eriq Moore scored the second touchdown of the game on defense when he caused a fumble and picked it up for a 42-yard touchdown.
Iannotti also was sacked twice in this game, including once by sophomore outside linebacker Kendall Donnerson in the fourth quarter. Donnerson stripped the ball from Iannotti with junior inside linebacker Roper Garrett recovering the fumble for a 20-yard loss.
Donnerson was ejected in Southeast’s last game in the first quarter on a targeting foul, and the same happened for fellow sophomore outside linebacker Chad Meredith in the first quarter of Saturday’s game.
Donnerson finished fourth on the team in tackles with seven on the night, six being solo, and also had two tackles for a loss that accumulated for a total of 19-yards lost.
Now with a record of 1-1, Southeast will travel to Terre Haute, Indiana, on Saturday to face Indiana State (1-1).
