MSU Football Defense

The Minot State Football team kicks off its season tomorrow night when the team hosts Bemidji Sta...  More »

The Minot State Football team kicks off its season tomorrow night when the team hosts Bemidji State. Tonight we take a look at the Beaver's defense. Mike Elm, Reporting:The Minot State defense should be solid with 7 returning starters. Up front the team doesn't have a lot of size so they'll try to utilize their quickness. Paul Rudolph, MSU football coach:I know most of those guys up front, we lost Jason Harvey but outside of that, you know we add a couple of other guys in the mix there and we'll have five or six guys in the D line that we can rotate with. Matt Weider, senior:We're definitely gonna use that to an advantage. Our front seven especially. You know thats kind of a key. We're a little undersized in most positions but hopefully we'll make up for that with our strength and quickness. Elm:The Beavers should also be strong at linebacker led by first team all conference player Martell Pope. Rudolph:We got four guys inside and four guys outside that have all played football. Martell Pope, junior:Everyone's on page with everything right now. Everyone's knows their position, knows their roles so we're gonna be a very sound football team. Elm:Despite a conference record 24 interceptions last year, the Beavers were last in the conference in pass defense and will try to fill the loss of first team safety Nick Marshall. Rudolph:We got three corners and three safeties, now there's a couple of safeties that are both new you know they're both transfer students who came last spring semester to us but they've got a feel for the nature of how we do things. I think we'll be alright. Marcus Prince, senior:We hope to even build on that record hopefully. Same scheme just couple new things added in that should make us be very successful. Gametime tomorrow night is at 7 p.m. at Herb Parker Stadium.  « Less