We have called them the Cardiac Kids. We have said they love to keep the emotional rollercoaster churning for their fans.
Somehow, someway the Hawks did it again on Saturday. In a tight, back and forth affair, UND downed Abilene Christian 34-31 to improve their record to 5-3 on the season. ACU drops to 5-3.
UND needs to win 3 of their last 4 to have a shot at the playoffs. This was box check #1. Next up: Indiana State.
The Hawks offense won the game again this week. It was a shootout and they fired the most bullets. 463 yards of offense and an impressive 27 first downs. This led to a 38 to 22 time of possession lead, including the 4th quarter where UND held the ball for 12 minutes.
Tommy Schuster was damn good, again, this week. Folks, we have a very good QB running our offense. I haven’t seen a lot of angst online this year, which tells me people are figuring out he is legit, but I do see it. Tommy has played good-to-great in all eight games this season.
Schuster was 23-32 for 292 yards and 2 TD’s. The UND offense had zero turnovers.
The Hawks were only penalized three times for 32 yards.
The reffing crew had a bad day, to say the least. When both teams are mad at you it’s not going well. That is all I will say on that.
Bo Belquist broke the 100 yard mark for the first time, which is a bit surprising cause he catches so many passes.
ACU ran a bit of a different defense than they had been running in previous weeks. They started out with some man-to-man pressures but then went to a two-high look and stuffed the middle. It made UND adjust on the fly but pretty soon the inside running game got on track, just in time to run the clock out at the end.
Speaking of which, that last drive by UND to put the game away was dominating. ACU had just scored to make it 34-31 with 7:48 left in the game. Pretty much everyone in the stadium knew that UND either had to score or run the clock out to win the game. ACU was scoring with ease at times and we certainly didn’t want to give the ball back to Maverick McIvor and those weapons.
So UND put together a methodical, exhausting, soul-sucking 13 play-49 yard drive that used up ACU’s timeouts and never gave them the ball back. It was a combination of Tyler Hoosman, Gaven Ziebarth, and Quincy Vaughn, to go along with excellent interior line play.
Good to see Tyler Hoosman back being the bell cow again. His hard inside running energizes the team. He ended with 112 yards and 2 TD’s.
The young guys on the outside, Jack Wright (2-53) and Caden Dennis (2-40), both had a couple long receptions.
The UND special teams played a poor game on Saturday. Big returns put the defense in bad spots multiple times. ACU had 208 total return yards. The Hawks defense is not nearly good enough to overcome a team being setup near midfield. Kick coverage was also down quite a bit from previous weeks.
UND notched two INT’s & that was so nice to see as turnovers have been rather hard to come by lately. Kadon Kauppinen and Malachi Buckner got them and both were big. When you get in a shootout you want to be able to steal a possession or two and UND did just that.
The Hawks secondary as a whole did not have their best day. The pass rush wasn’t really there at all, which directly affected the secondary. I was shocked that UND could not generate much pressure on McIvor but ACU did do what alot of teams do to UND – max protect and run 2-3 man routes. Big Sky teams did that to UND for years.
UND only had one sack in the game (Devon Krzanowski).
It seems that UND is going to need to outscore opponents moving forward. It has worked several times this year but isn’t ideal by any means. The Hawks should be able to outduel Indiana State and South Dakota to get to 7 wins. But some timely stops by the defense will be the key, much like they did this past weekend.