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Grand Valley State's football season started with a 26-23 double-overtime loss 2,150 miles from home at Azusa Pacific in suburban Los Angeles, and the critical thing moving forward for the Lakers will be to make sure it doesn't serve as an ending, too.

They must pick up their heads and pads, get back to work, practice hard and move forward. Nobody said it would be easy, and the schedule only gets tougher from here. Ohio Dominican visits in week two for the home opener. Ferris State is on the schedule after that.

There is a long season ahead, just as it was a long game that started on Thursday at 9 p.m. and ended at 12:43 a.m. Michigan time, well, Friday.

"Turnovers, stupid penalties on everybody, coaches and players, I had a bad penalty called on me and I can't do that," said head coach Matt Mitchell.

He wasn't finished.

"We were not able to protect our quarterback. He took more shots than probably any of the games at the end of last season. We did a lot of things you can't do against a good team."

Grand Valley just couldn't grind one out despite making the great effort to grind. The Lakers likely could have put it on ice with 3:48 to go, but sophomore kicker Joel Schipper, who had made a pair of 40-yard field goals earlier, pulled one left of the uprights from just 25 yards away.

That put the game in the hands of Terrell Watson, a bruising 240-pound running back, who finally appeared to just wear the Lakers' defense out with 42 carries, 207 yards gained and the winning score in the second overtime.

Just as life isn't fair, football can be especially cruel. The defense played well through the night, battled and fought and handed the offense great field position often. Then it was left to them when they had nothing left.

"They ran it down our throat a little bit at the end, but we had a few chances to put the game away, had good field position and didn't do anything with it, turned the ball," Mitchell said. "Our kicker made two long ones early, but missed the short one late. We have a lot of things we can clean up."

Mitchell expects just that.

"We have to regroup, look at tape, work on ball security like we always do, harp on the little things, just get back to work. It's just one game, and it's extremely disappointing, but we don't have a lot of time to sulk."

The Lakers did make several great plays, especially on defense in a hard-hitting game. Defensive tackle Frank Beonzi blocked a point-after kick which played into overtime happening in the end. Grand Valley just didn't make enough positive plays to fight through three second-half turnovers and critical penalties.

Azusa Pacific made enough plays. Make no mistake the Cougars earned a win by going toe-to-toe with the Lakers and refusing to lose.

"Give Azusa Pacific credit," Mitchell said. "They played hard. They came after us."

It was a defensive battle for the most part. Penalties, an inability to keep quarterback Heath Parling from getting pounded and a few dropped passes helped, but there was a Cougar or Cougars involved in making many of those things happen, too.

It turned into the grinding, frustrating kind of game where the team with a battering ram of a running back had the ball last and he didn't plan on getting stopped.

"In the end the things that happened are really all on us," Mitchell said. "Our inability to tackle Watson at the end. That's on us. He gets going downhill and he's tough and protects the ball. He did a great job. On the other hand, we have lessons to learn."

And a conference season ahead.

It's back to Allendale, and back to work for the Lakers. Remember, teams are remembered much more often for what happens in the last game of the year as opposed to what happened in the first.