VALLEY — The Point University football team (0-3) dropped its home-opener to NAIA No. 19-ranked Southeastern University 27-6 this past Saturday afternoon.

“In football, there are three phases to winning a game,” Point head football coach Julius Dixon said. “Offense, defense and special teams. With special teams, we just didn’t give ourselves a chance to win this game.”

The visitors blocked two Skyhawk punts that resulted in touchdowns in the first half. Point also missed a field goal attempt and its only extra-point opportunity of the afternoon as well.

“Those [blocks] made for a long afternoon,” Dixon said. “Climbing out of that hole was tough with a good team, and they were a good team.”

Point’s lone score of the day came from 47-yard interception return from Jarrod Ollie on a pick-six to bring the Skyhawks within a touchdown at the 12:31 mark in the second quarter.

“During the entire play, I was just thinking ‘I have to score. I have to score,’” Ollie said. “I didn’t see anything but green grass in front of me so I was like ‘I have to get in the end zone.’ We needed it, [so] I came through and made the play.”

Point’s defense only allowed 68 total yards of offense in the game, and junior defensive lineman Gary Davis recovered a fumble forced by sophomore linebacker Myles Hall-Hackett to end the third quarter.

Junior Isaiah McFarland led the unit with nine total tackles.

“I tip my hat off to the defense. Their effort was phenomenal,” Dixon said. “No matter where thee ball ended up, that never quit, never die attitude kept this [game] respectable. The defense was stellar.”

Point’s offense finished the game with 71 total yards. The Skyhawks alternated snaps between sophomores Micah Maxey and Keenan Wise at quarterback. With Wise, the offense entered the red zone twice, with both drives ending in interceptions.

“It was a quarterback that we had for the first time [Wise] just trying to make something instead of throwing the ball away,” Dixon said. “He was just in there trying to make a play. We’ve got to learn from that. That should’ve never happened, but it did. Now, we have concrete evidence, we can go back and look at it, he can see it and we can build off of it.”

Maxey finished Saturday’s game completing 6-of-22 passes for 20 yards, while Wise completed 10-of-18 passes for 111 yards in addition to his two interceptions.

Dixon said that he plans to make Wise the quarterback of the team moving forward. 

This week, Point will face its first unranked team of the season at St. Thomas University in Florida. Kick-off is scheduled for noon EDT.