‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.’ But what is the saying for the third or fourth time time somebody has gotten fooled?

So far this season, the Panther football team has found their fair share of leads heading into the fourth quarter of the game they are in, only to come away with either a loss or a much closer game than expected.

Against Southeast Missouri State on Saturday, Eastern looked like they had locked up the game and were ready to head to the locker room with a victory. But maybe they fooled themselves into thinking that, because the Indians came storming back and actually had a chance to tie the game with a last second hail mary that fell incomplete.

In the game, Eastern took a 35-14 lead into the fourth quarter and watched that lead evaporate into a touchdown margin, that allowed SEMO the final breath of life that they were looking for.

The Indians almost took advantage of it too, considering their receiver T.J. Milcic nearly hauled in the last second heave that would have tied up the game.

Whether it is a lack of focus, conditioning or intensity that causes problems for the Panthers in the fourth quarter, they are becoming quite prone to letting teams come back and make fourth quarters much more interesting than they should be.

The team has lost a game like this to Indiana State and nearly prolonged what should have been a sure win on Saturday.

Considering that has been happening, a feeling of anxiety has to be occurring for this team when the final minutes are closing in.

When the game is close enough in the fourth quarter for the other team to logically make a comeback an anxious feeling would make sense. But when the Panthers are controlling the game, comeback situations are probably even harder to take because the opponent shouldn’t even forcing the situation to occur.

Against SEMO, Eastern controlled the game through the running game that allowed Vincent Webb to gather over 150 yards and four touchdowns on the ground.

Matt Schabert pitched in with a solid game, in the process proving that that the transfer student most likely has the starting quarterback position locked up for the rest of the year.

Schabert went 16-30 for over 300 yards, a performance that provides Eastern with two rock solid facets, between the running game and the passing game, to their offense.

But when it came to running out the clock and finishing the game, a few aspects of the team began to slip.

The running game couldn’t eat up enough of the clock and the special teams began to give more opportunities to SEMO.

With a couple of blocked kicks, SEMO was able to give themselves field position and the opportunity to close the large gap in a short amount of time.

Before people could get up and leave O’Brien Stadium, which many started to do when the fourth quarter began because they assumed that the excitement was over, two more touchdowns were put up by SEMO and the score went from 35-14 to 35-28,

Overall, this is something will probably be fixed by head coach Bob Spoo over time. But until then let’s hope this trend doesn’t cause any more headaches for the coaching staff as the season goes along.