It’s the game no coach or player wants to play, but inevitably at some point they must.

No, not homecoming. The bounce-back game.

McNeese State has to rebound from last Saturday’s 38-22 loss at Sam Houston State if it wants any shot at getting back to the playoffs and achieving its larger goals.

Last season the Cowboys (3-2, 1-1 Southland) proved to be adept at that particular skill, coming back from blowout losses to Northern Iowa and Southeastern Louisiana with two of their most dominating performances in wins over Central Arkansas and Stephen F. Austin.

They will try to duplicate that form against Abilene Christian (4-3, 2-1) this weekend.

“It was a tough loss. We’re very upset about it,” said senior wide receiver Ernest Celestie. “But you go to film on Sunday, look at mistakes, and come out and fix those during the week. You work on executing, which is the biggest factor that was in the game. You don’t start from scratch; but you give yourself a fresh start.

“We have a purpose, we have a goal. It’s just one loss.”

McNeese head coach Matt Viator said he felt he practiced his team too hard last week, giving Sam Houston the edge in the energy department. He obviously meant it, because the Cowboys were in shorts instead of full pads for their Tuesday practice.

“We were able to get a lot of things done mentally on the field,” Celestie said.

Errors in execution popped up in all phases at Sam Houston. The Cowboys lost yardage on punt returns, allowed Bearkats quarterback Jared Johnson to break through for two touchdown runs longer than 65 yards and committed five mistakes that gave them a down-and-distance longer than 10 yards.

“It’s always tough to lose like that, but we have to get back to what we’ve been successful doing,” said linebacker Bo Brown. “Go back to our roots and work harder than we have. We didn’t execute like we wanted to. We had some big busts. Those guys are good athletes on Sam Houston, give them credit. But we didn’t execute like we wanted to.”

Quarterback Daniel Sams sees getting hit in the craw as something the Cowboys needed to gain perspective after buying into the hype after going toe to toe with Nebraska and blowing out their next three opponents.

“Guys are more serious and more into it,” Sams said. “We can’t take anybody for granted. I’m not saying we took Sam for granted, but we were probably a little bit high of ourselves going to Huntsville. It brought us back to earth and let us know that we’ve got to play perfect football as well to be great.”(MGNonline)