Several breaks didn't go the way of the Lincoln Blue Tigers on Saturday afternoon at Dwight T. Reed Stadium.
- Julian Jackson-Linkhart returned an interception 28 yards for a touchdown in the second quarter, but it was negated due to an illegal blindside block penalty, erasing six points from the scoreboard.
- Lincoln fumbled a handoff exchange at the Northeastern State 18-yard line, also in the second quarter, to thwart another potential scoring opportunity.
- On the final play of the first half, Winston Ausmer caught a pass on third-and-goal and was ruled down a few inches shy of the goal line.
- Although Lincoln scored a touchdown on its possession to begin overtime, the extra-point attempt was short, giving Northeastern State an opening if it was able to score a touchdown when it took over next.
- The Blue Tigers were penalized 11 times for 102 yards. Two of those penalties were pass interference calls on incomplete passes on third down, one of which was in overtime and set up an easy touchdown for the RiverHawks.
Those were only a handful of the breaks that didn't go the Blue Tigers' way. And yet, they nearly overcame them all to beat the RiverHawks.
"The thing I'm most proud of is them handling adversity," Lincoln coach Malik Hoskins said after a 49-48 overtime loss to Northeastern State. "We would do something, and then they would do something, and that's adversity. We would come back and do something really well.
"The last team with the football won the football game. It was exciting for me, to actually get an opportunity to coach a team and see the fruits of our labor, to just continue to fight and play with a lot of poise. I'm proud of them."
In a game lost by a single point, it's easy to shift the attention to Lincoln's kicking game.
Clayton Winkler was 4-of-5 on extra points during regulation, and the Blue Tigers picked him up on his one miss, a blocked attempt, by converting a 2-point conversion on their next touchdown.
In overtime, Ausmer caught a 3-yard touchdown pass for the Blue Tigers, but he cramped up afterward and had to leave the game for a play. Ausmer serves as Winkler's holder on kicks, meaning he couldn't be on the field for the ensuing extra-point try.
"We had to put a guy in to hold who hadn't done it all week," Hoskins said. "Now I'm not saying that had any effect on the kick, but for a kicker who's used to a snapper and a holder, when you change things, it changes his mindset.
"I'm not blaming Clayton for anything, I'm blaming the situation leading up to that."
In fact, Hoskins doesn't want to do any blaming at all. He disagreed with the referee's call that Ausmer was short of the goal line to end the first half, but he said there was nothing he could do about it.
"I'm not going to cry over spilled milk," he said. "I've been telling the players, 'Don't bring me excuses, bring me solutions.' If I keep talking about that, I'm making excuses, and I'm not going to make excuses for this loss.
"We had an opportunity to win this football game. I'm going to find a way to bring solutions to the table so we can win the next football game."
While the loss dropped Lincoln to 0-3, Saturday's performance was a drastic improvement from their first two outings of the 2021 season: a 76-12 loss to Washburn and a 72-0 defeat at Fort Hays State.
The Blue Tigers finished with 625 yards of offense (454 receiving, 171 rushing) on a program-tying record of 92 plays. In the first two games, Lincoln had 26 net yards rushing and 344 yards through the air.
"They looked like a young football team last week," Hoskins said. "This week, they looked like a team who has experience, has been on the field, has been battle-tested. They've played against two of the top teams in the conference prior to this game.
"I think those two losses, playing against competition of that caliber, gave us an opportunity to be confident on what we could do today."
Lincoln held a 13-7 lead at halftime, but there were chances for the Blue Tigers to have as many as 35 points at the break. Northeastern State came out in the second half and scored touchdowns on its first two drives to take a 21-13 lead, the largest lead of the game for either team.
"The old Lincoln would have gotten complacent after the first half," Hoskins said, "especially after giving up the touchdown on the first drive in the second half. The old Lincoln would have shut down. I told them this is not the old Lincoln, don't let anyone say otherwise. This is a new regime, and we're going to continue to build on it."
The Blue Tigers responded to their first deficit of the game by scoring three touchdowns in the final 4:36 of the third quarter. Hosea Franklin accounted for all three scores on carries of 1, 10 and 38 yards, but two of those touchdowns were set up by long pass plays.
Zamar Brake, who broke a Lincoln single-game record with his 454 passing yards, got the Blue Tigers to a 1-yard line on a 46-yard pass to Aderias Ealy, then threw a shorter pass to Ausmer, who broke a tackle and got into the red zone on a 61-yard gain.
"Offensively, we've got some weapons," Hoskins said. "Our concern is if we're going to be able to create holes for the run game. Today, we did a little bit of both. If we get time, Zamar is a whole lot better than he was a couple weeks ago. Hosea is starting to work himself back to form."
Franklin finished the game with 25 carries for 115 yards. In the Blue Tigers' first two games, he was held to 27 yards on 31 carries.
Brake threw a pair of touchdowns in the first half, the first for 41 yards to Ausmer and the second to Charles Johnson for 27 yards. In addition to the touchdown throw in overtime, he also completed a 50-yard pass downfield to Johnson with 13:09 left in the fourth quarter, giving the Blue Tigers a 42-35 lead.
"Every time that you looked up, we were running down the field wide open,"Hoskins said. "Zamar did a really good job of putting the ball where it needed to be, where those guys had an opportunity to make a play."
The Lincoln defense allowed 515 yards to Northeastern State but also forced three punts and came up with a big fourth-down stop at its 5-yard line early in the game. On special team, TeAndre Skinner blocked Tyler Crawford's 25-yard field-goal attempt as time expired to send the game into overtime.
Lincoln will play at 2 p.m. Saturday at Central Oklahoma (1-3), which has also dropped its last three games. Hoskins said he was pleased with the growth and the success the Blue Tigers had against the RiverHawks, but added there are no moral victories in the MIAA.
"There are no gray areas, you either win or you lose," Hoskins said. "You take everything that you did well, you accentuate that. You take all the things that you did wrong, you learn from it and you build on it.
"On Monday, we have to come back to work and fix these problems."