NOWHERE TO RUN—SLU QB Tyler Beatty (12) tries to escape a heavy rush from Mississippi State defensive linemen Tim Bailey (39) and Jimmie Holmes (97) during Saturday night's game in Starkville, Miss.

STARKVILLE, Miss. -Southeastern quarterback Mike Neville was only making his first Division I start at quarterback, but even that was enough experience to know that Southeastern's Lions were digging their own grave Saturday night at Mississippi State.

Against the blitz-happy Bulldogs, the game plan had to include a warning to stay out of third-and-long at all cost. But the Lions couldn't do it - and with predictable results.

The stat sheet from Southeastern's 34-10 loss at Mississippi State showed a 2-for-12 performance on third down conversions, and it's not hard to understand why. The average yardage the Lions needed to move the chains in those situations was 10.5 yards.

Just four times were the Lions looking at 3rd-and-5 yards or less. On six occasions, they had to gain 10 yards or better. Three times, it was 17 yards or better.

And a lot of that misery came because the Lions struggled on first down. On 15 first-down plays, the Lions gained just 25 net yards. And 20 yards of their plus yardage came on their first two plays of the game.

After that, they had three plays that lost yards - not including a false start penalty -  three that gained no yards and one that got one yard. No wonder they went 46 minutes of playing time in the middle of the game without earning a single first down.

“Throughout the game we made mistakes on first downs,” Neville said. “We got ourselves penalties, false starts, so that made it second and long. I thought we had a really good game plan, but when that happens, you really can't stick to the game plan because you're always trying to recover.”

All of that, of course, allowed State's defensive front seven to tee off on the Lions, and they did, getting five sacks. Neville, who finished 3-for-10 passing and had four balls batted down, said it wouldn't be fair to blame the protection in front of him.

“They're a fast team and a good team and we just didn't execute, regardless of the pass rush,” Neville said. “There were some misreads I had and I need to improve on that.”

Still, Saturday's game offered glimmers of reason for optimism. Other than a couple of key missed tackles, the defense held its own before getting worn down.

“I thought we played hard defensively,” Lions head coach Mike Lucas said. “We missed some tackles, but I think a lot of that is that big ol' running back (Anthony Dixon). We hit him, and he kept running. He's had big games against a lot of good people.”

That was frustrating to both Lucas - who said last week the Lions had run through “every tackling drill known to man” after missing many tackles in the opener at Alcorn State - and to Lions safety Marquis Powell.

“We practiced tackling all week and we just didn't convert like we were supposed to,” Powell said. “We expect to make every tackle and when we don't make the tackles, we take it hard on ourselves because we practice hard on it.”

Still, Mississippi State couldn't crack that defense in the final 21 minutes of the game, and the Lions came back and jammed in a fourth-quarter touchdown with Tyler Beatty at the controls to salvage something for the offense.

And considering the performances of several of the Lions' Southland Conference brethren against FBS opposition, Saturday's 24-point loss wasn't too shabby.

“We played a lot of young guys and they never let go,” Lucas said. “There in the second half, we stopped their driving when they still had their good people on the field.

“I'm proud of the kids. The kids played hard, they didn't give up and that's what we're trying to instill in our program. It was tough, but there at the end, we got the ball in the end zone. We didn't give up.”