LORMAN &045; Alcorn’s Braves found out quickly that getting back focused for Southeastern Louisiana this week won’t be easy.

It may, quite honestly, be a bigger test than anything Hal Mumme’s Lions could throw at them. It’s something the coaching staff is concerned with after that heartbreaking 23-20 loss to Southern University Saturday that dealt the team’s hopes of a SWAC Championship appearance an awfully tough blow.

This week’s game

at SLU is a break from conference, and it may come at the just the right time.

&uot;It was a devastating loss for this football program,&uot; Alcorn head coach Johnny Thomas said during Monday’s teleconference. &uot;We believed that we could have beaten Southern. We believed we can compete for the Eastern Division of the SWAC in the championship game. But it didn’t happen that way.

&uot;When you believe you can beat somebody, you have an opportunity to beat them and you don’t, it damages your heart a little bit. Then the reality sets in for the team, coaches and myself it’s over with and you’ve got to move on.&uot;

The loss could very well the Braves’ toughest to swallow in the last three seasons.

They had beaten the SWAC’s most successful program the last two seasons in Baton Rouge and had the Jaguars at home in a game they needed to win to stay in the division race.

And then there was the actual game itself &045; two fumbles late in the game kept the Braves’ offense on the sideline after executing near-flawlessly in the second half.

Now the loss saddled with Braves with two losses in conference. They have to win out and hope Alabama State loses two of its last three games &045; Saturday against Alabama A&M, Nov. 6 at Grambling and Nov. 13 against Mississippi Valley State.

&uot;Southeastern has a good team and a good coach, but we also have a good team,&uot; quarterback Donald Carrie said. &uot;We’ll have to prepare a little better and be mentally focused for the next game. I don’t ever get down on my teammates as long as they leave everything they had on the field. That’s what my team was doing. We just have to suck it up and come back next week.&uot;

Sure-handed Lonnie Teagle fumbled a punt return, and standout cornerback Taurian Parks’ lateral after the Braves blocked a field goal wound up in the hands of a Southern player.

Those two plays were the biggest flukes of the entire afternoon. Teagle is the best return man in school history and had fumbled just twice in his four years at Alcorn, and Parks was getting swung around on a tackle when he tried to lateral it back.

Alcorn coaches hoped the officials would have nullified the toss and ruled it a forward lateral, but instead Southern held the ball and ran out the clock.

&uot;The funny thing is Parks had a great game,&uot; said receiver Nate Hughes, who had a season-high nine catches for 131 yards. &uot;But people will always say how (Southern) got it back. I think he played a great game. Our motto is to make plays, not screw up.&uot;

Said Thomas: &uot;Those guys played extremely hard. Lonnie Teagle is trying to get every inch. He was trying to get all he could, and he fumbled the ball. I don’t blame him. That’s on me. Those guys were trying to make something happen. If (Parks) would have scored a touchdown, we would have been jumping up and down.&uot;

Carrie and the Braves had moved the ball and connected on a 61-yard touchdown pass from Carrie to Charlie Spiller before Teagle’s fumble landed in the hands of Woodville native Mark Frederick. But credit the Jaguars for holding the Braves on their next and final drive after taking the 23-20 lead.

Carrie hit Spiller on a 14-yard pass for a first down and tight end Johnny Washington on the next play for 9 yards. But Robert Lester was thrown for a 2-yard loss before Carrie’s pass to Hughes went for just one yard to force the Braves to punt.

&uot;I thought that stand was big,&uot; Southern head coach Pete Richardson said. &uot;We were having trouble stopping Carrie. It seems like every time we play him he makes a highlight film. Carrie is a great quarterback, and (Lester) did an outstanding job of running the football.&uot;

The Braves’ defense, meanwhile, struggled to contain Southern’s running game in the second half and couldn’t get it off the field. They kept blasting it up the middle where the Braves were without middle linebacker Leo Nobles, who suffered an ankle injury the day before the game.

&uot;We had been searching for a middle linebacker the last three or four weeks,&uot; Thomas said. &uot;We moved him to middle linebacker, and we realized that has been the solution to our problem. To lose Leo Nobles, who is our leading tackler and the guys we have ultimately found to replace Omega Logan at middle linebacker, hurt us a little bit &045; but not to the extent we could not win the game.&uot;

NOTES &045; Carrie was named Offensive Player of the Week in the SWAC Monday after throwing for a season-high in yardage this season. It was just behind his 379 yards last season at Southern Š Running back Vernardus Cooper went down in the second quarter with a high ankle sprain after missing three games earlier with a MCL strain Š Saturday’s attendance of 32,151 at Jack Spinks shattered the previous record of 26,500 when the Braves hosted Southern Oct. 22, 1995. Four of the top five single-game attendance marks are games against Southern.