MSU Football

The Minot State Football team travels to Sioux Falls this Saturday when they take on the top rate...  More »

The Minot State Football team travels to Sioux Falls this Saturday when they take on the top rated and defending national champion Cougars. The Beavers moved up to the 14th spot in the final NAIA Poll and are making their first postseason appearance since 2002. The Cougars are led by quarterback Lorenzo Brown and are 2nd in the nation in scoring averaging just over 53 points a game. The Beavers point to a solid defensive showing as a key. Paul Rudolph, MSU football coach:They're a good football team and their quarterback definitely makes them go. I mean there's arguably he's probably the NAIA player of the year but we got to defense him well and gotta see if our offense can do a good job of keeping him off the field and if we can do that then we feel like we got an opportunity. Martell Pope, senior:Their quarterback's a very good athlete, awesome player. I watched film, he made some plays that a lot of players couldn't make and so we key in on him, we stop him, make him get the ball out of his hands and we're gonna be good on defense wise. The Beavers come in ranked 2nd in the DAC in scoring offense and although the team would like a low scoring game, it feels it can put up points if it needs to. Rudolph:We think we can throw the ball with a handfull of people and that's certainly not the type of game we want. We just as soon see if we can keep the football and nickel and dime here and take some shots here and there and hopefully we can run the football a little bit and that's what we'd like to do. We don't want it to turn into that game by any means. Jon Meier, senior:When we get in that redzone we gotta put the points on the board, we can't settle for field goals so any chance we get we gotta get a touchdown and then hopefully our defense will hold them so we won't have to worry about it. Zach Rudolph, sophomore:We should be able to move the ball. That's what we're hoping for. They do got a good guy at the quarterback position so that's why they do score a lot of points. But do a good job of containing him hopefully and just look for a fun game. Game time on Saturday will be at 1 p.m. in Sioux Falls.  « Less