The SMU football team let one slip away on Saturday. And it's not something the Mustangs want to happen again.

"Disappointed for our players, disappointed for our fans," SMU head coach Rhett Lashlee said after the game. "For three and a half quarters we were the better team, and then we didn't finish. If you want to win, you've got to finish. You can't start the job and not finish the job."

SMU scored a touchdown to go up by 14 points with 8:38 to play. Baylor scored twice in the next eight minutes to force overtime and eventually win 48-45.

"We're up 38-24 with eight or nine minutes to go," Lashlee said. "They're only going to get, probably, two possessions, and we've got to either get a stop or, when we get the ball back, not give it back to them. We didn't do either one, and then we find ourselves in overtime."

There is nothing the Mustangs can do about the loss. But they can control plenty moving forward. 

The loss won't define this season, either. The response and the ability to learn a lesson will.

"We'll respond well. If we want to have a good football team, all our goals are still there," Lashlee said. "I think we can have a good team. I think we'll keep getting better, as long as we stick together, and we'll see how we respond. This is really the first big moment of adversity for this year's team."

After losing to BYU in Week 3 last year, the Mustangs won nine straight games, including a perfect 8-0 in ACC play, to reach the conference championship game and the College Football Playoff.

Now it is up to the 2025 Mustangs to find that kind of response.

"This year's team is a new team. We're a really young football team. We knew that," Lashlee said. "Was really proud of how they competed. That was a good football game, and for three and a half quarters, they did everything they needed to do. We have to learn that you've got to finish the job. This is a new team."

Just two games into the season, everything is still ahead of the Mustangs. With two more nonconference games, both on the road, and then eight ACC games, there is plenty to play for.

SMU has to keep that in mind and move forward.

"Just for us, stay the course," quarterback Kevin Jennings said. "It's not the end of our season. We've still got a long season to go. This won't determine anything. At the end of the day, we've got to keep grinding so we can get to the point we want to be at."

No team wants to lose. The goal is to win every game. But if a team does lose, if it learns from that loss, it can turn into a good thing down the road.

The Mustangs will find out what they are made of as they try to learn from their mistakes.

"We're going to learn. You don't like to do it through losing and failure," Lashlee said. "But failure is where growth happens. Growth doesn't often happen that much in success. I told them the key will be how do we respond. ... How this group will respond will probably determine the quality of the season we can have. I think we can continue getting better and better and have a good football team. This doesn't take any goals off the table for us."

The players know that. 

They are ready to get back to work, prepare for the next game and get back into the win column.

"We understand that you don't exactly see who you are until adversity strikes," Nwokobia said. "That's when we're going to see what kind of team we are. Right now, we're focused on staying together, continuing to prepare where we need to, continuing to focus on us because we know that when we come out and we play our best, we can compete with anybody in the country, we can beat anybody in the country."