BROOKINGS — South Dakota State lost its first game in almost two years on Saturday. The Jackrabbits won’t have time to sulk though as No. 12-ranked Incarnate Word comes to town this weekend and both coaches and players believe they can learn from their first loss in 30 games.

“I think we’ll be fine,” said head coach Jimmy Rogers. “We have a lot of maturity on this team. As much as we’ve won here with these guys, they’re still winners. That was a tough game. I felt like we competed in so many ways and I thought our guys hung in there for as long as we could, but we just didn’t make a few of those key plays and reflecting [on the game] I think [the players] saw that. … We spoke last night and I thought the players took the message really well.”

SDSU lost 44-20 to the Cowboys, who are now ranked 16th in the AP Top 25. But when watching the game you could tell that the Jacks were a few plays away from being right in the game.

Specifically on their first drive a miscommunication between quarterback Mark Gronowski and tight end Greyton Gannon on a fourth and two resulted in an incomplete pass and a turnover on downs. Gannon also tripped on a defender’s foot on the play.

Later in the game the Jacks faked a punt on their own 40 yard line and punter Hunter Dustman threw the ball behind Joe Ollman and it looked like the linebacker had space to get the first down.

Gronowski also missed three or four throws in the game that would have resulted in long gains or touchdowns and he threw an interception in the first quarter. Rogers also pointed to the defense and was disappointed in the amount of missed tackles on Saturday.

“There’s a lot of moments and situations inside of that game that we can learn from. … [The players] could see how close they were with some of those plays and we just didn’t make the play. Many times we were in the right spot and doing the right thing and just didn’t make the tackle out in space or we just didn’t win one-on-one coverage,” Rogers said.

Talking to players, they relayed the same message as Rogers.

“It came down to the little things,” said junior safety Tucker Large. “We have to make the play. It comes down to us executing the little things. We have to tackle and get off blocks. It comes down to the little things.”

Senior running back Amar Johnson was one of the bright spots for SDSU on Saturday. He ran for 73 yards on nine carries, including a 40-yard run on the final play of the first quarter that set up SDSU’s second field goal of the game. He said the team has tried to focus on a lot of the positives that came out of competing with the Cowboys.

“We’ve been looking at the positives. We showed some good things on film and also some bad things, but we try to harp on the good things. We went in there and played the No. 17 ranked team in the country and we did some things really well. We want to stack days on top of that and stack the good plays that we had and replicate those things,” Johnson said.

Johnson added that the Jacks were a couple plays away and were in the game when they went to the locker room for halftime on Saturday.

“It’s easy to handle the loss [when you look at it like] we were only one block away. Like on that fourth and two, we were one guy away and he just fell down and tripped. You go there and do that against a Big 12 team and [we hung] with them in the first half. It was 17-6 [at halftime] and we got into the red zone but just didn’t execute and didn’t convert. We just have to take that into this weekend and harp on the small details,” Johnson said.

SDSU had a total of 13 new starters on Saturday. Many of them have played before in reserve roles or in a rotational role but having their first start come in front of over 50,000 people was a challenge. Large said he thought the players that were making their first start showed why they were chosen to be starters, but the whole team needs time to gel together.

“They showed some flashes of why they’re supposed to be out there. They’ve been waiting for that opportunity forever and a lot of them made the most of it. A lot of us guys that have been playing made some mistakes, but also new guys made some mistakes. We just have to be on the same page and have the same communication. Once we do that, we’ll be in a great spot,” Large said.

The loss to Oklahoma State does not impact the Jacks’ goals for the rest of the season. In fact SDSU remained at No. 1 in the Stats FCS Perform Poll this week. Losing is not something that the Jacks want to become a trend and they’ll look to bounce back on Saturday at 6 p.m. in front of a sold-out crowd at Dana J. Dykhouse Stadium.

“We’re definitely not use [to losing],” Large said. “It hurts. [Oklahoma State] is a good team. We just have to realize that we have a new opponent this week and we have to lock in for another week [of practice] and go 1-0.”