In a highly taxing week and with heavy hearts following the death of a teammate, the Southeastern football team rode an early wave of emotion to a 21-7 first half lead over nationally secondranked Harding on the road last Saturday.
Coach Bo Atterberry’s squad couldn’t maintain that intensity throughout, however, as the Bison responded with 31 of the final 34 points of the contest to prevail 3824 and snap Southeastern’s three-game winning streak in Great American Conference action.
Two of the early scores came from a defense that was playing shorthanded after losing two starters midweek and they came within eight seconds of each other early in the second period to break a 7-7 deadlock.
Kole McKnight intercepted a Harding pass and returned it 50 yards for a touchdown and William Wallis immediately followed with a 20-yard scoop and score of a fumble on Harding’s very next play from scrimmage. It was the first time since 2015 that the Savage Storm scored two defensive touchdowns in the same game.
“I’m just so proud of the effort,” Atterberry said afterward. “That’s what I told the guys. We wanted to come honor our brothers and I feel like they did that and I’m very proud of them. We can talk about complimentary football. We had more adversity than you could imagine this week, but these guys responded and chose to come and play. And the way they played showed what’s in their hearts. I couldn’t be prouder.”
Levay Duncan opened the scoring for Southeastern with a 25-yard touchdown run with 4:32 to play in the first period but that proved to be one of the few positives on the ground for the Savage Storm all day as they were limited to 12 yards for the game.
Southeastern was able to do some things through the air in the second half as Luke Hohenberger came off the bench to complete 15 of 27 passes for 146 yards, which led to the team’s lone second half score on a Dylan Cox 25-yard field goal in the final stanza.
Christopher Jackson was the top receiver with four catches for 36 yards. Jax Sternberger also snagged four for 25. Kameron Lockhart chipped in two grabs for 33 yards, Dy’curian Douglas had two for 27 and Sean Steens three for 21.
Prince Dweh led the defensive charge with a season-high 14 tackles as Jacob Geddes checked in with eight and William Billings and Christian Brumley tallied six apiece.
The Savage Storm will look to get back on the winning track Saturday when they travel to Northwestern for a 2 p.m. kickoff.