Matukewicz era officially launches for Southeast Missouri State football team tonight vs. Missouri Baptist

It will be a game of firsts when the Southeast Missouri State and Missouri Baptist football teams take the field tonight at Houck Stadium for their season openers.

The 6 p.m. kickoff will mark Tom Matukewicz's first game in a true head coaching position -- he served as interim head coach at Northern Illinois during the 2010 Humanitarian Bowl -- as well as the beginning of the "Coach Tuke Era" of the Southeast football program.

Spartans coach Jason Burianek will also be coaching for the first time as a head coach and will lead MBU, an NAIA team in its first year of competition, in its inaugural game.

"Right now I'm just excited and enthusiastic about the opportunity," Matukewicz said. "You know, you work really, really hard for 12 opportunities every year. We've worked hard to get to this point, and the thing that I'm going to tell myself a lot is just 'Enjoy the moment.' Enjoy the moment because as a coach we're always about how we can do things better and about expectations and stuff like that, but really I'm going to try to enjoy the day also."

There's a sense of unknown for both teams as they enter the first game of the season.

Southeast Missouri State football coach Tom Matukewicz speaks after a scrimmage earlier this month at Houck Stadium. (Fred Lynch)

There's no film to watch, no stats to analyze on the MBU team, and while Matukewicz would like to know more about the Redhawks' first opponent, how his players handle this game will teach him a lot about the team.

"They're in a different stage of their program, and it'll just be a good test to see kind of where we're at," Matukewicz said. "If that's a situation we handle well, we'll know more about our football team. If we don't handle it well, we'll know more about our football team."

Burianek noted junior quarterback DeMarco Billups, a transfer from Mesabi Range Community College, has done a good job in preseason running the offense, which Burianek said, "will be a little more multiple."

"Defensively we're just trying to be really simple," Burianek said. "We want to make sure that our guys know how to line up because obviously the offense has a major advantage in knowing a play is coming. We're just trying to get our guys to line up for different formations and be sound against different formations and against different run and pass schemes that we're going to see, and not just against SEMO but throughout the course of the year. We're trying to be as simple as possible and make sure our guys know what to do and can play fast. We're not to a point where we can throw a whole bunch of different schemes out and they'll be able to react. We're just not to that point yet."

The Spartans are experiencing some growing pains in their inaugural season. The school announced there would be a football team in March 2013, and there were around 40 players that participated in practices last fall.

The team currently lists 89 players on its roster. There are no seniors, six juniors and the rest are underclassmen.

"What my hope is is that we come out of this game and don't get overly frustrated depending on whatever happens because it's a whole different ball of wax when you're going against a tough opponent in your first game ever," Burianek said.

Each week, Matukewicz goes over keys to victory with his team. For this week, the three keys are to play hard, play smart and play together.

"When I talk about 'play smart' I mean no critical errors, missed assignments," Matukewicz said. "We talk about play hard -- no what we call LOEs, lack of efforts. And then play together. I don't want to see if someone only gets three plays, they're hang-dogging it on the sideline. If something doesn't go well with a kid, maybe he drops a ball, does he have bad body language? Those are things from a program standpoint that I feel like we need to come out of this game feeling good about."

Southeast has switched to a spread offense that will be led by senior quarterback Kyle Snyder and will feature multiple playmakers, including wide receivers Paul McRoberts and Spencer Davis and a deep running back corps that features DeMichael Jackson, Lennies McFerren, Lewis Washington and Brendan Stewart. The Redhawks will also run a 3-4 defense this season.

"I expect that that's going to be a well-coached ball club that we go against on Thursday night, so we've got to be ready for that," Burianek said. "Obviously this is their first game under a new staff and there's going to be a lot of guys on the other side of the field that are going to want to prove to their new coaching staff that they can play and are ready to play."