Week 4 Recap / Week 5 Preview
The big game of Week 3 was #1 Humboldt State vs upset minded Cheyney. There were two other good matchups we will feature in North Dakota State taking on Shepherd and Tusculum facing off against North Alabama.
#1 Humboldt State (3-0) Cheyney (0-3)
In Cheyney's last huge nonconference game of the season, they try to take down the current Press and Coaches Poll leader, Humboldt State.
Jaylien1's has made deep runs into the playoffs in each of his 7 seasons at Humboldt, including making all the way to the championship two seasons ago and the third round last season. He has also won the NCC 6 out of his 7 seasons and appears well on his way to another title. Humboldt prefers an even attack out of the Pro Set, but their real strength lies in their depth at LB and DB.
Let's see how it all played out.
Cheyney fans can finally rejoice. Despite being held to only 1.1 yard per carry, QB Gary Hall was able to move the ball through the air enough to upset the current #1 team.
After going into half with a 13-12 lead, Cheyney added to their lead with a 51 yard pass from Gary Hall to RB Raymond Shapiro. Then, early in the 4th quarter they connected again through the air for a 55 yard TD.
Humboldt was never able to get it going on offense, averaging only 4.6 yards per pass attempt and 3.1 yards per rush.
In the end, the big plays by Shapiro were enough to give Cheyney the upset and some much needed confidence with conference play coming up.
Humboldt should still roll to their conference title after this tough loss, and don't be surprised if jaylien1's squad still manages a deep run into the playoffs.
In another interesting matchup, North Dakota State and coach zharkins travel across the country to take on Shepherd and coach dawgnuts.
North Dakota State came in grossly over-ranked, as they bean #25 ranked Lane last week, but have been one of their weaker squads in recent years. In fact, rumors are swirling that zharkins may be looking for warmer weather and more fertile recruiting grounds as finding talent willing to come to North Dakota has proven to be difficult in his time there. NDSU loves to throw the ball at a frenetic pace, and at times is very successful doing it, which is evidenced in the fact that their starting QB is #3 in passing yards in D2 and their backup is #25 in passing yards. But as much as they focus on offense, NDSU is thin at LB at DB, with only 5 upperclassmen total at those two positions. This puts them in a position to have to win shootouts, which against top competition is rarely successful.
Shepherd is lead by longtime coach dawgnuts, who in his 70th season at the school would have to be nearly 100 internet years old by now. Dawgnuts has built his team back up after a long string of first round exits, but has made consecutive trips to the 3rd round in the past two seasons. Shepherd likes to run trips exclusively and tends to pass about twice as much as they run the ball. In their first three games, they obliterated their sim competition. They are led by junior WR Herbert Robinson (9th in rec yards) and freshman TE Carl Taylor (12th in rec yards).
On to the highlights.
Tied 28-28 with 0;13 left in the first half, Johnny Lopez completed a pass to WR Clifford Stone, who broke a tackle and raced 63 yards to give Shepherd the 35-28 halftime lead. They wasted no time coming out in second half when Lopez connected with RB Dennis Burris for a 41 yard TD pass. NDSU tried to mount a comeback, but every score was answered by Shepherd.
Now through 4 weeks, Shepherd leads D2 in Total YPG by over 83 yards per game more than the next closest team, and it showed today.
Shepherd has a tough test against Winona State (4-0) in their next game, so if you like track meets, this will be one to watch.
North Dakota State has a sim matchup next week, followed by a matchup against their in state rival North Dakota (4-0) and coach col_lou.
Week 5 Preview
Heading into the final week of nonconference play, we have picked two more interesting matchups to preview.
#2 Winona State (4-0)
#9 Shepherd College (4-0)
Winona State has been sleepwalking through their OOC schedule under second year coach lsusaint after a second round exit and #11 final ranking last season. Shepherd had been doing much the same until their thrashing on North Dakota State in their last game.
If Winona State wants to slow down Shepherd, they will need their 4 senior linebackers and 5 senior DB's to play a great game. The Warriors want to use a slightly pass heavy, yet balanced pro set attack to put a lot of points on the board, but they will lean heavily on a defense that is only allowing 5.8 points per game so far, albeit to sims. In fact, Winona State has the #2 scoring offense and total offense in D2, only behind their opponent, Shepherd.
Shepherd will look to put the ball in the air early and often and look for big plays to throw an early knockout punch. I look for Shepherd to win by two touchdowns with their nearly unstoppable offense.
#3 Edinboro (4-0)
#19 Saint Joseph's (3-1)
Edinboro comes into the game with three wins against sims and a 30-22 win against 5th year coach tbook and New Mexico Highlands. Vhoward415 runs an all shotgun attack and a 4-3 defense with a fairly young secondary. Edinboro has made the playoffs in 5 of the last 6 years, but made an early exit all six times. According to GD reports, this is his most talented roster yet. While ranked the 26th best roster, I know from experienced that WR heavy offenses with no RBs are very underrated on GUESS ratings.
Saint Joseph's and coach fla_dave lost a tough one to Lock Haven last week, and will look to bounce back in this game before facing a conference schedule that features 5 human coaches. Saint Joseph's uses multiple looks out of I formation, Notre Dame Box, and Trips which can make it difficult to game plan against. The one weakness I see in their offense is that junior QB Robert Hurst has been susceptible to throwing pics with his formation IQ only around 60 in the formations they use. Keep your eye on all everything back Juan Peterson who leads the team in rushing and receiving yards.
This game looks like a toss up to me, but if I had to make a pick, I would take Saint Joseph's...by 1...in quadruple overtime.
That's it for now. Check back tomorrow to see how the games played out and our look forward to the opening of conference play.