Fargo

Whenever North Dakota State gets a new opponent in the Fargodome, your favorite Five Things columnist has a certain investigative reporter mentality. Who are these guys? What makes them tick?

In true reporter fashion, Five Things was looking for a connection to this year’s newcomer, Macon, Georgia-based Mercer University. Five Things has a college friend who was once the city manager of Macon, Missouri, and one of his first acts in the 1980s was to adopt a city slogan: “Macon Progress.” Get it? How to make progress?

The best thing Five Things could do this week is Jay January.

Sounds like a perfect name for North Dakota. It came to my attention through a local media source that Jay January was a guard at Minot High School until he moved to Texas to finish his prep career.

January played his college ball at Mercer from 2001 to 2004 and graduated with a degree in Mass Communication/Media. He’s kind of one of us writers in the college curriculum. So therein lies every kind of connection, a great reach if ever there was one.

At least in the regular season, a communications professor in Colorado is an NDSU graduate and had Deion Sanders speak to his class, East Tennessee State’s radio play-by-play voice worked for a Fargo station and Murray’s quarterbacks coach State played at NDSU. Solid connections to Fargo.

Abilene Christian? Five things went nowhere. Mercer? Not much. At the very least, a Division I FCS quarterfinal game needs to be played and things get sorted out on the field.

Here are five things to keep in mind for the Mercer at NDSU game:

Mercer has a long history: The school was named after a Baptist leader named Jesse Mercer. He was one of the school’s founders in 1833 and later became and is still known for his outstanding academic achievements.

It just wasn’t that long ago in football history.

The program began in 1892 but was discontinued in 1917 due to World War I. It was later resumed but was discontinued again in 1941 due to World War II. In 2013 it was brought back to life.

NDSU football, on the other hand, wasn’t great during the World Wars until it rose to football prominence in the 1960s, giving the Bison a 60-year head start in tradition. That can make a difference this time of year.

The Bison loves to run the ball. Mercer likes to prevent the other team from passing the ball. The Bears are very good at it too, leading Division I FCS in rushing defense while giving up just 66.0 yards per game.

This means that the FCS is not only ahead, but actually has a pretty big lead. Tennessee Tech is next with 82.9 yards per game.

The Bears’ stingy total includes giving up 189 yards to Alabama. It’s going to be an interesting first quarter for the Bison: Will they even try to establish the lead? Samford made a killing as he scored 378 points and scored 68 points in a 55-35 win over Mercer. Alabama passed for 319 yards.

NDSU has one of the most precise passers in the FCS in quarterback Cam Miller.

There are a few other interesting twists in Mercer’s run defense: Most of the teams the Bears played against weren’t exactly rushing juggernauts over the course of the season. Four opponents out of 123 teams ranked 100th or worse in rushing offense. Four others finished 59th or worse.

On the other hand, the Bears’ best rushing offense – East Tennessee State, which ranked 20th in FCS statistics – had just 13 yards rushing. On the other hand, the Buccaneers threw for 459 yards in a 37-31 Mercer win.

Five Things has some advice for those trying to parse all those rushing defensive stats: Wait until after the first quarter to make a decision on NDSU. The Bison rank 14th in the country in rushing offense at 200.6 yards per game.

Voters for the Southern Conference postseason awards didn’t need much convincing. Mercer defensive end Brayden Manley was named the league’s Defensive Player of the Year. Defensive end Andrew Zock was named Freshman of the Year.

Cornerback TJ Moore was one of 35 finalists for the Buck Buchanan Award alongside Manley. Moore and free safety Myles Redding each lead the FCS with seven interceptions. Mercer leads the FCS with 42 quarterback sacks.

“They have two guys with seven interceptions,” Bison head coach Tim Polasek said. “I respect their pass rush ability, if you give them an inch they will take it. Most impressively, they get 75 percent of the field on third down. We have to keep an overview offensively. I think this team will be ready to play and we need to play our best football of the season.”

NDSU is 9-0 against the Southern Conference, although the margin has narrowed this year. The Bison narrowly defeated East Tennessee 38-35 thanks to a rare onside kick late in the game.

There were a few other close calls too. The Bison needed a school-record 29 tackles from linebacker (and current NDSU defensive coordinator) Grant Olson to beat Wofford 14-7 in the 2012 quarterfinals. A week later, they got a touchdown run from quarterback Brock Jensen on fourth down and beat Georgia Southern 23-20 in the semifinals.

A 27-9 win over Samford in the 2022 quarterfinals wasn’t exactly a resounding victory. In general, however, the difference in leagues between Missouri Valley and SoCon was noticeable in December.

Jeff would like to dispel the idea that he was there when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, but he is now in his third decade of reporting for Forum Communications. The son of a reporter and an English teacher, and the brother of a reporter, Jeff has worked at the Jamestown Sun, the Bismarck Tribune and, since 1990, the Forum, where he has covered North Dakota State athletics since 1995.
Jeff has covered all nine of NDSU’s Division I FCS national football titles and has written three books: “Horns Up,” “North Dakota Tough” and “Covid Kids.” He is the radio host of “The Golf Show with Jeff Kolpack” from April to August.