Dickinson State blanks the other DSU, 52-0, to end regular season
Nov. 13—MADISON, S.D. — The Dickinson State University Blue Hawks cruised through the final game of the 2023 regular season with a resounding North Star Athletic Association road victory over Dakota State University on Saturday, Nov. 11 with a deck-of-cards'-worth of points, and blanked the Trojans 52-0 while ending the regular season at the top of the NSAA with an 8-0 record (9-1 overall). The team now will head to Butte, Mont. this weekend for the first round of the NAIA postseason. The victory was the Blue Hawks' second shutout of the 2023 calendar — the other being a 41-0 win over Waldorf University two weeks ago — and was another dominant performance on both sides of the ball for DSU, and was even-more lopsided than the 40-14 homecoming win over Dakota State back on Oct. 7 at the Biesiot Activities Center.
As has been the case for much of this year, the Blue Hawks jumped all over the Trojans (1-7 NSAA, 1-9 overall) from the outset, as the team held a 35-0 lead at the half on the strength of an exceptional and efficient opening 30 minutes from junior signal-caller Will Madler and the brutal DSU rushing attack, led by junior RB Braden Zuroff, who plowed in for 3 TDs and rushed for 59 yards on 9 carries. Madler zipped a pair of touchdown passes, one to up-and-coming junior wideout Cameron Sheppard on a 35-yard hookup and the other a 29-yarder to standout Dickinson native Noah Sickler.
"I think it's just that our guys are playing at a high level now and we're putting it together well," DSU head football coach Pete Stanton said. "We started a little bit slow on defense with the first drive — they had a pretty good drive to start the game — but we took over and i think it's just playing confident and doing a good job in all three phases of the game."
Madler ended up with a productive day at 13-of-16 with 240 yards and a pair of touchdowns, while Sheppard led all receivers with a team-leading 5 receptions and 103 yards (also tops for the Blue Hawks) and Sickler snared 4 catches for 91 yards. Tight ends Nathan Schumacher and Galen Brantley III not only helped the running game gain 168 yards on the day with a 6 yards-per-carry average via steady blocking on the line, they had a combined 6 receptions for 82 yards through the air.
Those first-half scoring strikes were interspersed between a pair of gritty touchdown runs of 8 and 2 yards from Zuroff and the team's leading rusher added a 9-yard trot to his totals at the 1:38 mark just before the team went into the tunnels at the half to post the 35-0 advantage.
Junior backup QB Bridger Grovom raced into the end-zone at the 11:50 mark in the third quarter and then RB Darion Brown — who ended up with a team-high 60 yards — broke off an amazing 41-yard run just after the fourth-quarter change-of-field at 13:32, while Chase Miller notched a 19-yard field goal with a little more than five minutes left to close out the scoring for Dickinson State at 52-0.
The defense had another solid day, limiting the Trojans to just 174 yards of total offense, and Dylan Dahlgren, Jasper LaDue, Dickinson native Krew Mathern and Matt Anderson all swept into the backfield for sacks, while the defense collectively registered 9 tackles for losses in the win.
"We're obviously excited to get into the postseason; we've worked really hard getting to this point," Stanton said. "We took care of business last week, and we knew we were going to be in this week, it was just a matter of determining who we were going to play so our guys are really excited for the opportunity."
This-year's title is the ninth-consecutive NSAA win for DSU, which booked that achievement last week versus Valley City State at the BAC with a 48-17 win. But with the postseason afoot and DSU having to travel to Butte, Mont. this Saturday — regardless of whether the Orediggers have posted a subordinate 6-2 Frontier Conference record to DSU's 8-0 and a 7-3 Montana Tech record overall — Nov. 18 will be a chance for DSU to win its first playoff game since a 14-6 upset victory over then-No. 5 Northwestern College (Iowa) in 2016, which was the Blue Hawks' first playoff road-win in program history.
"it was surprising that we were traveling, but like I told our guys: You control what you can control and we're excited to be in the playoffs," Stanton said. "It would have been great to have it here, but that's not the case and our guys are going to be ready to go and looking forward to this week."
Dickinson State (No. 20) has a 7-23 record in its 30 previous NAIA playoff appearances and currently outranks Frontier Conference Champions Montana Tech, as the Orediggers are sitting at No. 22 in the NAIA national poll, with the Blue Hawks' most-recent playoff appearance coming in 2022 when they lost to Northwestern in the opening round of the playoffs.
For more information about the Dickinson State University Blue Hawk football team, please keep reading your Dickinson Press and/or visit their website at
https://www.dsubluehawks.com/sports/fball/index
.
