One day, Southeastern head coach Mike Lucas thinks, his Lions will jump up on a team and take a 28-0 lead early.

And that day, Lucas said, will be the day that something positive comes out of Saturday’s stunning 48-45 loss to Stephen F. Austin.

“We’ll be able to say, “Remember Nacogdoches!’” said Lucas, mustering some kind of positive from probably the toughest loss the Lions have endured since joining the Southland Conference.

Most of the Lions would probably prefer to forget. A stunningly comprehensive collapse in the kicking game and perhaps a little youthful hubris cost the Lions their four-touchdown lead and negated some decent performances by the offensive and defensive units.

“I just can’t believe it,” Lucas said. “(We gave up) thirty points directly off of special team blunders — bad snaps to the punter twice, a blocked punt, two fumbles by the punt returner and a kickoff return down to the 40 and 15-yard penalty added on to it, roughed the punter — all special teams.

“If any one of those things doesn’t happen, we win the game. Just one of them.

“I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The amazing thing is that it came against a team that had gone 0-for-two-seasons against FCS competition, a team that had blown a 28-point lead of its own just the previous week, a team that was punch-drunk and wobbling Saturday.

But the Lions (3-3, 0-1 SLC) could not deliver the kill shot. Instead, they began to blunder, and Stephen F. Austin (2-3, 1-0 SLC) took hope, took momentum, took advantage.

SFA coach J.C. Harper said his team drew upon its own stunning come-from-ahead loss of the week before to pull off a miracle rally of its own.

“(Southeastern) really came out and took it to us early. It didn’t look like it was going to be close,” Harper said. “I gave the credit to South Dakota State because we were beating them 34-6 with six minutes to go in the third quarter and it looked like we were going to run away. And I think if we would have scored in the third quarter coming off a kickoff fumble I think it would have been different.

“With them, just like McNeese State, when you know how to win, and you just expect to win, then those things happen.

“For us, we just really got lucky. I think the bottom line (is), we got lucky, some good things happened, and I think it really goes back to our experience against South Dakota State.”

That’s experience that Southeastern now has — experience you simply can’t put a price tag on. Nor can you buy it down at the local Wal-Mart. Heading into Saturday, 26 of Southeastern’s 60 traveling players had never been through a league game, and they certainly got an education.

“If you haven’t played in a Southland Conference game, you can’t realize how physical it is and how intense it is,” Lucas said. “It’s different than non-conference games, because every week people are going to play like their backs are against the wall and they’re fighting for their life — every week.”

The sheer physicality was almost frightening.

“We had more injuries in this ballgame than the first five put together,” Lucas said. “Our kids have to understand how physical it is. There were more serious body shots, people getting after it and throwing bodies around, a lot of chipping around the pile.

“People don’t always do that ‘little extra’ in non-conference games, but in the Southland games, it’s going to be like that every week. You can say it over and over and over again, but until they experience it themselves, then they don’t understand it themselves.”

The Lions, however, gave as good as they got, Harper said.

“Southeastern is a physical football team. Very physical,” Harper said. “We got banged up. We’re a banged up football team. We’re battered and bruised. I hope that we can get to be as physical as Southeastern was.”

Small consolation to Lucas, who would probably trade a little of that physicality for that ‘W’ Harper has in his SLC hip pocket.

And it’s a long wait for redemption for the Lions, who have their bye week this weekend before hosting Northwestern State for Homecoming on Oct. 18.

No doubt a lot of that extra practice time will be devoted to the kicking game. It’s not the first time this season the Lions were done in by special teams mistakes, and Lucas said it will take a combination of lineup changes and attitude changes to rectify the problem.

“It’s one or two specific spots that are recurring that we have to look at making some changes in personnel,” Lucas said, fully aware that he can’t change all 11 positions. That’s where the coaches have to get busy.

“You can’t take a play off,” Lucas said of the mind set required for special-teams play. “We punted eight times; you do the right thing seven times, but the one time you don’t do it right, your man comes through and blocks the punt.

“You can’t take that one time off. You have to be perfect every time, and we have to learn that.”