Football season comes to a close for Southeast

The Southeast Missouri State football team’s season has come to a close and it finished under .500 for the fifth straight year at 4-7 under second-year coach Tom Matukewicz.

The Redhawks lost their final two games the year, falling to No. 1 Jacksonville State 56-28 on the road on Nov. 14 and finally at home in a three-point loss, 28-25, to UT Martin on Nov. 21.

Matukewicz now has an overall record of 9-14 as Southeast’s coach and is 6-9 in Ohio Valley Conference play.

“You never stop getting better, and I certainly have a lot of things where I feel like I can improve,” Matukewicz said. “One positive note, we were the worst in the conference in turnovers and then this year we were the first. And so I feel like we’ve made strides as a program that way.”

Southeast was ranked first in the OVC in turnover margin with a plus 10 by forcing 21 turnovers and only turning over the ball 11 times all season. Last season, the team had a negative nine turnover margin, turning over the ball a total of 26 times with 15 coming from interceptions.

The Redhawks quarterbacks only threw a total of eight interceptions this season with there being a change at the position during the team’s game against Indiana State on Sept. 19.

Freshman quarterback Dante Vandeven, who was named OVC Freshman of the Year, took his first snap in that game and finished the game going 12 of 17 for 115 passing yards with one passing touchdown and one interception.

Southeast ended up losing the game to the Sycamores 29-28, but it was the first time Vandeven found first team All-OVC senior wide receiver Paul McRoberts for a touchdown.

After that game, Vandeven was named Southeast’s starting quarterback for the remainder of the season, and he knew he had to step into the role that is demanded by being the team’s quarterback.

“I kind of learned you’ve got to be comfortable being in there,” Vandeven said. “But I learned how to be a better leader than I was in high school, than I was ever. Working with older guys now that are 22, 23, it’s a lot different. You really have to learn how to mature and I think I’ve done that fairly well.”

Vandeven also tried to become as vocal of a leader as possible this season, which he said being a vocal leader is a quintessential part of being a team’s quarterback.

Vandeven hooked up with McRoberts for eight of his 11 touchdown passes on the season.

Vandeven finished the season completing 155 of his 250 passing attempts, throwing for 1,568 yards and was intercepted seven times this season.

“It takes preparation [getting comfortable in the pocket],” Vandeven said. “Each week you have a new mission — a new objective — and you work with those goals and accomplish some of them. It really helps you feel more comfortable in the pocket, feel more comfortable running an offense so it really comes week-to-week.”

McRoberts caught 64 of his career-high 76 receptions this season from Vandeven and also had a career-high 940 receiving yards with nine receiving touchdowns in his final season as a Redhawk.

Vandeven said it was a pleasure playing with McRoberts for his first season at Southeast, and McRoberts said the two have some things in common that help with creating chemistry on and off the field.

“It’s crazy because I’ve never been around a young man that has so much positive actions, and his personality, he’s just a loving kid — he’s goofy just like me, so I kind of relate to him and look at him like a little brother,” McRoberts said. “It’s crazy having a little brother throw you the football. It’s like, ‘Man, I could’ve never imagined that.’ So I’m thankful for him and he is a blessing to this university.”

McRoberts has caught nine touchdowns in each of his last three seasons, helping him break the former school record for receiving touchdowns, which was 27 set in 2012 by Willie Ponder.

McRoberts’ two touchdown performance in his final game at Southeast against UT Martin brought his career total to 29.

“Obviously you love having the guy on your team,” offensive coordinator/quarterback coach Sherard Poteete said. “… It’s just trying to find a way to get the ball in his hands as much as we can, and we’ve had to move him around from different positions from the slot to the outside receiver on the left to the right just to try to get some defenses to stop doubling him and just try to get the ball in his hands. I just hope that he’s able to continue on after his career here at SEMO and that he’s playing several years down the road somewhere.”

Southeast’s offense finished the season ranked fifth in the OVC in total offense even after it lost its starting running back, senior DeMichael Jackson, and one of its starting wide receivers, sophomore Adrian Davis, to injuries.

One of Southeast’s signees from its 2015 recruiting class, junior running back Tremane McCullough, was the next man up after Jackson suffered a torn ACL in the same game the coaches put in Vandeven as the new starting quarterback.

McCullough ran the ball 18 times against Indiana State for 114 yards and Southeast’s second rushing touchdown of the season.

“Well we knew that [McCullough] had some talent and some ability, we knew he was an electric kind of guy, a homerun kind of guy,” Poteete said. “We just thought with having DeMichael for the year that he would be catching balls from the slot position as well as running the ball some. We didn’t think he’d be running the ball like he was because you’d planned on having DeMichael Jackson in there, but he’s stepped in valuably.”

McCullough ended up being the only Redhawk besides McRoberts to earn first team All-OVC honors this season by rushing for 1,028 yards and five touchdowns.

He was the first Southeast player to have 1,000 rushing yards in a season since 2012 when former Redhawk Levi Terrell rushed for 1,349.

Southeast returned three of its five starting offensive linemen from last season, all in the interior of the line, and found replacements at both offensive tackle spots.

Sophomore left tackle Alex Snyder and junior right tackle Michael Cooke started and played in each of Southeast’s 11 games this season.

With the two new starters on the offensive line, only 20 sacks were allowed, with 13 on Vandeven, and Southeast ended up rushing for a total of 2,012 yards on the season.

The team will lose one of its starting five, senior right guard Traven Mable, to graduation, but Poteete said the team has been able to work in freshman offensive tackle Drew Forbes throughout the season.

“So we’ve really played six guys, and the good thing is we’ve got five of those guys back for next year,” Poteete said. “There’s nothing like game reps — it beats practice reps any day of the week. Those guys have come in and did a good job, they’ve moved people in the run game and they’ve allowed Tremane to have a really good year.”

Junior offensive guard Garrett Baker was the third offensive player to earn All-OVC honors by being named to the second team along with three other Redhawks, including sophomore cornerback Mike Ford, junior inside linebacker Roper Garrett and punter Alex Knight.

Southeast ranked sixth in total defense in the conference and was led by Garrett who finished with a career-high and team-high 106 tackles and was second on the team in tackles for a loss with 10.

“We just come out and try to win the big situations — third down, red zone,” Garrett said. “And I feel like most of the season we’re at the top of the list in the conference. I feel like we’ve left a couple of quarters out there during the season and I’m so proud of our team and how we’ve played.”

Garrett suffered a broken leg during his sophomore season and was able to play in only nine games, but finished with a team-high 96 tackles, giving him an average of 10.7 per game and ranking him 10th in the Football Championship Subdivision.

Heading into this season, Garrett was put in the position to be more of a leader for the defense, and he said he thinks he has done a good job this season at doing so.

“Just helping the younger guys, too,” Garrett said. “I’ve kind of tried to take on — there’s a bunch of younger guys, especially in the linebacking core — and I’ve been trying to help them through what I’ve gone through.”

One of the younger players Garrett has been working with is freshman inside linebacker Stephon Williams, who started in six games for Southeast this year and finished fifth on the team in tackles with 50.

“There’s many hours before even the season starts,” Garrett said. “You have all those hours in the winter and just bonding time, working out, and once you get on the field just playing together you kind of get — the more you play with somebody the more chemistry you’ll build. So that’s really how it’s been going with me and Steph, he’s going to be a good player.”

Southeast lost both its starting cornerbacks from last season due to graduation, and this year for the Redhawks, Ford and junior cornerback Ryan Moore started all 11 games at corner.

“So it’s like somebody has to step up, somebody has to lead us, somebody has to pick everybody up and make everybody know we’re a good secondary,” Ford said. “We can play. I wasn’t worried about that at all going into the season.”

Ford led Southeast in interceptions this season with five, two of them coming in the second game of the season against SIU Carbondale on Sept. 12.

Ford earned Co-OVC Defensive Player of the Week for his performance against the Salukis by picking off a quarterback, senior Mark Iannotti, who threw a career-high six touchdowns against Southeast in 2014.

During this offseason, Ford made the move from wide receiver to cornerback and, in his time with Southeast, has learned separate techniques from two different coaches that helped him with his transition.

“When I got moved to DB, I had [former defensive backs coach Kenny Wilhite], which he taught me a completely different technique than coach [Melvin] Rice taught me,” Ford said. “So I’ve got two techniques, and I mean it’s always better to have multiple variations of techniques so you can always go to something else so somebody can’t figure you out.”

The technique Ford learned from Wilhite was what he called a motor technique, which means to mirror the receivers off the line of scrimmage. Rice taught Ford the shuffle technique, which puts cornerbacks in a better position to break on the football quicker.

“I definitely feel like [those techniques] definitely help me, and then once I started for this year, it was mainly focused on putting my hands on receivers,” Ford said. “If I can put my hands on you, then I can feel your tempos and I can break on the routes. That definitely helped me a lot and it’s really what I focused on this year. The coaches were always telling me, ‘Consistency, consistency. Don’t open the gate, put your hands on receivers.’”

Ford credited the defense on its pass rush for making his job easier since rushing the opposing offense makes the quarterback throw the ball quicker.

Southeast sacked opposing quarterbacks 31 times this year with junior defensive tackle John Popovich having a team-high of five.

Matukewicz said he feels like this year’s team made strides to improve and that newcomers like McCullough, Vandeven and Williams are reasons why this year’s roster is better for now and the future.

“I think we’ve had some disappointing losses, but it’s not been a disappointing season,” Matukewicz said. “When you can beat an SIU and a Murray [State] who are our rivals, it’s been a good year, but we certainly want to keep striving to take that next step as a program.”

Matukewicz and Poteete both said consistency was Southeast’s main struggle this year and that the team has not been able to put together a full four quarters.

“We try to educate them about how to be consistent, you’ve got to have a consistent schedule,” Matukewicz said. “What you’re doing each and every Friday, each and every Thursday, Wednesday and Tuesday and so forth. I think that’s the biggest thing, and when you have a lot of new players, a lot of young players playing for you, there’s a lot of firsts, a lot of news.”