Another No. 1 team in FCS football goes down! North Dakota made a statement with an impressive 21-10 win over South Dakota State.
It was a massive rebound win for the Fighting Hawks, who suffered an upset loss to Northern Iowa last weekend. As for the Jackrabbits, it was a head-scratching performance coming off a bye week, especially with the return of starting quarterback Chase Mason.
South Dakota State's offense just never got into a comfortable rhythm. An underrated part of this game was how it played out along the line of scrimmage. I looked at plays that were "Down to Go of 3 yards or less" (Ex., 3rd & 3, 2nd & 1, etc.).
North Dakota went 7-for-8 on these opportunities, including converting its first 6 opportunities. Not many of these resulted in touchdowns, but they largely contributed to sustaining drives and keeping SDSU's offense off the field.
In those same situations, SDSU went 2-of-5 when attempting a run. It certainly is not terrible, but it killed drives and hurt the confidence of this offense early in the game. In general, North Dakota had a rushing success rate of 41.9%, while SDSU was limited to a 29% success rate. If you remove the long run from Basinger, the Jackrabbits averaged under 3.5 yards per carry.
In pass protection, Chase Mason was under pressure on 35% of his dropbacks, while Kaminski only faced pressure on 24% of his passes. Part of this was that SDSU only utilized play action on 16% of its passes, while 52% of Kaminski's dropbacks were out of play action. While UND got decent pressure numbers, they were able to do that despite only blitzing on 29% of those plays. Lance Rucker led the team with 7 total pressures.
We do have to spend a little bit of time on this SDSU passing game. It was only Chase Mason's first game back, and we should allow for some time for him to get back into a rhythm, but Mason leads quarterbacks on Top 25 teams in the percentage of throws that travel 10+ yards in the air. It's a huge part of this offense.
On Saturday, Chase Mason was 4-of-22 on throws that traveled 10+ yards down the field. Some criticism should be levied at the play calling and wide receivers as well. Did we ever see these guys running wide open down the field or in a bunch of space? He's constantly having to make tight-window throws, plus there were 2-3 drops this past weekend.
However, if this is going to be a big part of this offense, they have to be more effective. It should be mentioned that North Dakota cornerback Grant Noland had an outstanding game. He was targeted seven times and only allowed one reception for five yards. Noland and this secondary made Lofton O'Groske completely disappear on Saturday.
South Dakota State's defense held North Dakota scoreless in the second half, but the Jackrabbits could not capitalize due to poor offensive execution. There were also too many missed opportunities for SDSU, which included two drives that ended in a turnover on downs in UND territory, plus a missed FG late in the fourth quarter.
We'll see if North Dakota can carry this positive momentum into another massive MVFC matchup against South Dakota in Week 8. The Fighting Hawks have one of the toughest remaining schedules in the country, which makes this weekend's win even more important for eventually playoff seeding.
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