No. 1 South Dakota State overwhelms No. 12 UND 42-21
Sep. 30—BROOKINGS, S.D. — The UND football program wants to be in the conversation with the top teams in the Missouri Valley Football Conference and the elite FCS programs nationally.
On Saturday, the Fighting Hawks looked a long way from elevating their FCS status.
South Dakota State running back Isaiah Davis ran for 132 yards and three touchdowns and the No. 1 Jackrabbits beat the No. 12 Fighting Hawks 42-21 in front of 19,231 at Dana J. Dykhouse Stadium.
The sold-out crowd was the fourth largest in stadium history.
"If you commit too many to the run, they have good wide receivers and can hit the tight end," UND coach Bubba Schweigert said. "They're a really balanced team on offense. We need to get better. They have a lot of weapons. We knew that coming in. That average per rush was too much."
The Jacks outrushed UND 266-68. SDSU only punted once, went 6-for-8 on third down and scored touchdowns on all three first-half drives.
A big momentum swing came before halftime when SDSU, looking to add to a 14-7 lead, faced third-and-18 following a holding penalty. Jacks quarterback Mark Gronowski found Jaxon Janke for 19 yards.
"We had them in third and 18," Schweigert said. "Big play in the game. We needed stops like that."
Five plays later, Gronowski hit Janke on a 6-yard touchdown pass on third-and-goal to finish off an 18-play, 91-yard drive that lasted 9 minutes, 36 seconds and ballooned the Jacks' lead to 21-7.
UND's offense struggled to make big plays. Gaven Ziebarth was UND's top rusher with five carries for 22 yards. The longest run of the day was by quarterback Tommy Schuster, who had a 14-yard scramble.
In the passing game, Schuster, who hasn't thrown an interception in 186 pass attempts, was 19-for-24 for 118 yards and a touchdown. He was sacked twice, the first two sacks of SDSU's season.
The Jacks racked up 433 yards of total offense and were five-for-five in the red zone.
"It's really about sticking together," UND cornerback C.J. Siegel said of the Hawks' two-game skid. "It's back to the drawing board."
UND, 2-2 overall and 0-1 in the MVFC, now hosts a struggling Western Illinois program next weekend.
"It's nice to have home games, but we want to be tough on the road," Schweigert said. "We have to regroup here. It's still early in the season. We have a big game next week, and it doesn't matter who the opponent is. You have to look at your performance, evaluate it and have desire to get better."
The final score didn't represent the Jacks' full dominance. SDSU led 35-7 after Davis scored from 1-yard out early in the fourth quarter.
UND's first-half highlight was a fourth-and-1 sneak by Quincy Vaughn for a touchdown to cap a 15-play, 75-yard drive. Vaughn's score, which was reviewed as a potential fumble but upheld, cut the SDSU lead to 14-7.
UND scored twice in the fourth quarter. Luke Skokna caught a 5-yard touchdown pass and backup quarterback Trey Feeney ran in a 5-yard touchdown run with 45 seconds left in the game.
"That's a good football team in UND, and we were able to come out and play fast and control the ball and the time of possession," SDSU coach Jimmy Rogers said. "Really proud of our two lines with our ability to stop the run and run the football."
