By Clyde Hughes
D3sports.com
When is a loss really a win and visa versa?
Rose-Hulman can answer part of that question and the result has temporary given them an early upper leg in the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference race.
The Fightin' Engineers 27-21 victory over Mount St. Joseph, which has made the playoffs the past four seasons and won the HCAC title three of the last four years, was a bit unexpected after Rose-Hulman lost to previously winless Greenville the week before.
But coach Steve Englehart said it was actually the Greenville game that set the wheels in motion for the Fightin' Engineers' big win.
"You can learn a lot from a loss," said Englehart, whose team is now 3-1 on the season. "You can learn more from a loss than a win. I think in this case, that was definitely what happened. I think we learned more about ourselves in losing to Greenville than we did if we have beaten Greenville. I still say if we had beaten Greenville, I don't know if we win this game against Mount St. Joe. We learned a lot from it and will be able to carry it forward to the next weeks to come as well."
Englehart said it was easily the biggest win for Rose-Hulman since joining the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference in 2006. In the previous seasons, the Engineers posted 3-4 (6-4 overall) and 4-3 (7-3) records in conference play. Mount St. Joseph won the contest between the two teams 49-20 last year.
He said, though, the victory will mean little if the Engineers don't keep winning.
"The way we're looking at it is that it was a big win and we enjoyed it afterwards but it was just one conference win," Englehart said. "That win won't mean anything if we don't win another conference game. We feel good about where we're at, but like any coach would say we have to keep working and get better."
Calvin Bueltel rushed for a career high 168 yards against arguably the best defense in the Heartland Collegiate. He captured player of the week honors in the conference and is now averaging nearly 100 yards per game (381 95.3 yards a game).
Rose-Hulman running attack allowed the Engineers to hold the ball for 40 minutes against Mount St. Joseph. That will come in handy when they play a team like Franklin that has a prolific passing and scoring attack.
Senior defensive lineman Paul Spreen anchors Rose-Hulman's defense. He leads the conference in tackles for loss with 11. The four-year starter has 231 tackles over his career, 18.5 sacks and seven forced fumbles. His fourth-quarter fumble recovery last week helped seal the victory for the Engineers.
Englehart said the win against Mount St. Joseph could help in other areas of its program as well. Rose-Hulman is known around the country as one of the nation's premiere engineering institutes, so a win like this can help engineer a new game plan for football recruits.
"Winning always helps everything," Englehart said. "It helps recruiting. It helps the mindset of your kids. It helps the way you're looked at on campus. We recruit Cincinnati very hard and so now we can go there and we've got some type of rivalry with Mount St. Joe as far as them not beating us all the time. We can step on the field and compete against a hometown team they would be a little familiar with. That will pay some dividends."
Englehart said the past two weeks has taught his team how to overcome adversity. He said his players will know down the road in games that they have been there before and have been successful.
"They have that lesson (loss to Greenville) and learned from it," Englehart said. "Life is like that as well. You're got to come prepared every day and every week. If you don't do well one week or one time, whatever the case may be, if you come back and prepare yourself good things can still happen. After the game against Greenville, we were down, obviously, and it was something where we were able to take a step back and take a look in the mirror and see if what we were doing was right and find our identity and it helped us."
In that, Rose-Hulman turned a loss into a win.
