Fresh off of a bye week, the Southeast Missouri State football team looked to continue Ohio Valley Conference play at Tennessee Tech on Saturday, Oct. 22. They were defeated 21-20 and fell to 2-5 overall and 2-2 in the conference.

After losing to Eastern Kentucky 31-16 on Oct. 8, Southeast dropped its first OVC game of the season. The team had the following Saturday off to regroup and recover before finishing the final stretch of the season. It came exactly halfway through the season, and with only two away games left, coach Tom Matukewicz is taking advantage of the schedule.

“To be able to finish out at home will hopefully pay off,” Matukewicz said. “It’s a lot tougher on the road. We’re looking through the second half running through Houck.”

For Southeast, the off weekend was used as a chance to recover. Matukewicz gave the players two consecutive days off.

“We [coaches] got some work in, too,” Matukewicz said. “The staff got to recruit. I think we handled it well.”

Matukewicz said he made sure players got the rest they needed but wanted to bring them back ready to travel to Tennessee Tech. It seemed to have paid off during the beginning of the game. Southeast scored in the first five minutes of the game with a 1-yard touchdown run by senior running back Will Young. Southeast had a 10-0 lead after the first quarter against Tennessee Tech before allowing the opposition to score all 21 points in the second quarter — a total Southeast was unable to overcome.

Young, who now has rushed for 515 yards and three scores, took advantage of the days off to catch up on sleep.

“Saturday I slept in until 1 o’clock in the afternoon,” he said. “The following Sunday, I accidently skipped church, so I took the opportunities to catch up on some rest.”

Young ran for 102 yards, his second highest behind his 114-yard performance on the first game of the season.

Junior quarterback Jesse Hosket used the bye week to review things with his offense and kept his guys fresh and ready for Tennessee Tech.

“We don’t hit on each other too much,” Hosket said. “We review from the beginning of the season and learn from our mistakes and move on and get better on our offensive game.”

Hosket finished the game throwing for 197 yards on 15-27, throwing with a touchdown and an interception.

Senior running back/wide receiver Tremane McCullough said he was nervous the team would come out flat and lack focus after the bye week but was impressed by his teammates.

“We’ve been executing a lot of our plays,” McCullough said. “We’ve been focused more than the usual. We’re looking pretty good.”

McCullough struggled with only 53 all-purpose yards in the game, considering he averaged more than 110 all-purpose yards in each of the first six games.

Southeast will play its next two games at Houck Stadium against Austin Peay on Saturday, Oct. 29 and Jacksonville State on Nov. 5.