NOBODY HOME—Southeastern’s Brady Myles (17) sprints to the pylon on a razzle-dazzle reverse for his first career touchdown during Saturday’s 38-35 victory over North Dakota. By John Lenz

Two weeks ago, Southeastern had a big offensive night, gave up a ton of passing yards and late touchdowns in the fourth quarter and had to fight to the last play to hold on for a 31-30 victory.

And Lions head coach Mike Lucas came away with smoke pouring out of his ears.

On Saturday night, Southeas-tern had a big offensive night, gave up a ton of passing yards and late touchdowns in the fourth quarter and had to fight to the last play to hold on for a 38-35 victory.

And Lucas was happier than a pig in slop.

This time it was everyone else who was grumbling.

“My biggest critic this week’s been my wife,” Lucas chuckled at his weekly press conference Tuesday. “After the South Dakota game I was angry. After the North Dakota game, I didn’t care — because we won.

“North Dakota was good,” Lucas explained. “I’d been saying that all week, and I don’t know if everybody believed me or not. I got some strange looks from people during the week when I said that. How good can North Dakota be? They’re a Div. II school moving up to Div. I level.

“Well, I think we saw that out here Saturday night. It took everything we had to pull that one out.

“So we leave (Strawberry Stadium), I’m pretty happy. We go to dinner and we’ve got five of our ex-lettermen in the restaurant there getting after me about how many passing yards we gave up. And I’m thinking, didn’t we just win the ballgame?

“Then I go home and my wife is getting after me about how many yards we gave up. Hey, Lions won! Somebody get a smile on their face around here.

“The most important thing is that at the end of the game, the Lions have more points than the other team. If we’d have given up that many points to a poor football team, I would have felt different. But coming out with a win against a team that was undefeated is a pretty good deal.”

Lions quarterback Brian Babin didn’t have another 300-yard passing game, but he was reasonably close (269 yards on 19-for-29 throwing) and he still has not hurled an interception this season in 149 attempts, with eight TD passes after getting a pair on Saturday.

Aided by some creative play calling — Babin also caught a TD pass from Jay Lucas — he led the Lions to a 38-21 lead midway through the third quarter, and it almost wasn’t enough as North Dakota rallied to within a missed 49-yard field goal on the final play of the game.

Which is where Mrs. Lucas and those Lion lettermen were looking. North Dakota quarterback Danny Freund threw for 319 yards and three touchdowns, and just like in the South Dakota game, the Lions let the opponent’s No. 1 receiver gash them. This time it was Brady Trenbeath running wild for 13 catches for 201 yards.

And while Lucas is happy for the win, he knows just like his wife does that the pass defense has to shape up with the Southland Conference season opening Saturday against Stephen F. Austin and its Air Raid attack.

“That is a great concern,” Lucas said of the Lions’ pass coverage, which was a problem going into camp and is still a problem heading into the conference wars.

“I think in the last several games we have asked some kids to do some things that maybe they’re not physically able to do,” Lucas said. “In the past we had maybe a little different athlete (at cornerback) who was a little more capable of doing some things, coverage-wise.”

In North Dakota’s case, the Trenbeath and Freund were able to catch Lion DBs peeking into the backfield and run a bunch of out-and-ups that sprung them wide open virtually all night long.

“They double-moved us to death,” Lucas said. “Just about all of their long throws were over the same player and with a double move by (Trenbeath). We felt like we could handle him with the coverages that we had, but we were mistaken.”

Now comes SFA, which probably has more athletic receivers than either of the Dakota teams did and knows how to use them. The only advantage, Lucas said, is that Southeastern knows SFA’s offense possibly as well as the Lumberjacks do.

“I think we may be more familiar with the Air Raid than most,” said Lucas, who worked with Hal Mumme at UTEP. SFA offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson was on Mumme’s staff here and again at New Mexico State — a team the Lions opened the two past seasons against.

“We were running the Air Raid, had to see it every day at practice for two solid years, then we played New Mexico State the past two years,” Lucas said. “We’ve probably got more reps against the Air Raid than anybody in the conference.”

Now all they have to do is stop the Air Raid.

“We’ve got to find a way to keep them in front of us,” Lucas said. “We’ve been giving up too many long balls. We’d rather have short completions where we can break up and make the tackle and try to punish the receivers, be physical on them.”

But the main thing for this program, Lucas said, is the win. Which is why he was happy leaving Strawberry Stadium Saturday night.

“We need our kids to feel good about themselves,” Lucas said. “We need this program to have confidence. North Dakota did not lack for confidence. They felt like they were going to win the game right down to the last six seconds. We have to get our program to that level.

“These three wins have all been huge for us. Our kids are starting to say, ‘Hey, maybe we’ve turned the corner a little bit. Maybe we’re pretty good.’ Confidence is worth a lot of points.”