The final weekend of the regular season wraps up and there weren't a lot of fireworks, but I think all NSIC fans were pleased to see that SCSU didn't get held out of the playoffs with a 1-loss season. I figured there would be some way that they'd get in, and I'm very happy for their supporters.

Here is the weekly results:

Minnesota State-Mankato 73, Upper Iowa 7
So as I sit in the stands at Wayne State, awaiting kickoff, I get a text saying that Kato is up 42-0 on UIU..in the 2nd quarter. Good Governor..this Mavs team is something. Teams like UIU, Winona, and USF (all 6-5 teams who compete decent with pretty much everyone else in the South) just got wafflestomped by the Mavs. I mean..games over at halftime kinda stuff. Yards....633 to 159. Nuff said.

Mary 31, Minnesota-Crookston 15
Mary wins by a few scores, as expected. Solid season by Mary, finishing 6-5.

St. Cloud State 64, Minnesota State-Moorhead 27
SCSU puts the hammer down on the seemingly upstart Dragons. I think most saw this one coming. Klaphake throws for 500 yards and ends up with over 10,500 yards thrown in his career, coupled with 2700 yards on the ground....only the 3rd D2 QB ever to accomplish 10k and 2k respectively. Terribly impressive.

Sioux Falls 35, Wayne State 10
I went to this game, so I will have a little more to say about it than others. For the better part of this contest it felt like a 3-7 team versus a 2-8 team. USF didn't look polished, but luckily Wayne made up for it by looking terrible. 7 turnovers, 5 of them via INT, most of them hung in their way too long and were easy turnovers....honestly. Plenty of balls dropped by the WSC wideouts, and overall they just didn't make plays when they had the opportunities. As for USF, they need to find a better way to manage the end of games as it relates to this hurry-up attack they've adopted. With 9 minutes left in the game and up 28-10, they are snapping the ball 10 seconds into the play clock. I'm not trying to hear the reasons why it's a good idea because there's too many tactical reasons why it's not. 40 seconds later Wayne State gets the ball back and they huddle. Go figure.

Cougar Freshman Brady Rose (RB) did shine in place of Nephi Garcia, with 110 yards and 2 scores. Carrington Hanna was the USF QB most of the way (I think the USF coaches just felt..safer..with him at the controls, while trying to secure a winning season) and he was ok, but nothing fantastic. Hanna wins the Egg MVP in his last game and USF secures 20 straight years of winning seasons for the Coo.

Minnesota-Duluth 39, Northern State 7
..about the game most of us expected. Duluth rolls as Northern finishes out a disappointing year.

Bemidji State 35, Minot State 14
Once again BSU flips things on us and wins. This team was a coin flip, weekly. They beat Winona and SMSU, and then lose to just about everybody else. Go figure. I think Minot got the memo that I picked them, as they should have been a slight favorite here..but with 2 teams that are under .500 just about anything can happen. With Minot having a young team last year at the skill positions, I thought they would be a little more capable than they were this year.

Southwest Minnesota State 34, Augustana 24
SMSU gets out to a nice lead, Augie comes back, and then SMSU secures the win by 2 scores. While this win only moves the Mustangs to 7-4 (which doesn't sound WOW), it's really a big win for the program. They get the Augie elephant off their backs and they find themselves in the Mineral Water Bowl. My USF team went 9-2 last year and didn't get a bowl opportunity, but it shows how you can't compare one year to the next flat out by wins and losses. The league itself is different from year to year. Congrats to the SMSU supporters, I think a lot of people didn't think that you had a chance to land in this spot earlier in the season....and you proved a lot of people wrong by earning your way to the game.

Augie finishes 4-7 behind their first year Coach (OJ). With another losing season it's starting to feel that the Vikings are becoming far removed from the their glory days of not that long ago with Tyler Schulte and Joe Clark. At that point in time it really seemed like the trajectory of this program was heading upward. The defense seems about as good as I can recall at Augie, but the offense has become a bit of a head-shaking question mark. Overall they are still pretty young though..

Concordia-St. Paul 23, Winona State 13
What the What..? I checked this game earlier and saw 20-0 CSP. Kudos to the Bears for showing up and caring about finishing strong. I get the impression that the Warriors spirit was a bit broken when they saw that SMSU had already won and they had nothing more to play for than pride.

Final Overall Standings
1. Minnesota State-Mankato (11-0), about what we expected.
2. Minnesota-Duluth (10-1), see above.
2. St. Cloud State (10-1), most thought this team could be this good, but this year they beat they teams they should have.
4. Southwest Minnesota State (7-4), huge year for this program.
5. Mary (6-5), easily the 3rd best team in the North.
5. Sioux Falls (6-5), young team who kept the winning seasons alive.
5. Upper Iowa (6-5), similar year to SMSU but ended in a really unpleasant way.
5. Winona State (6-5), young team with high ceiling. A lot of time to think about this final effort.
9. Concordia-St. Paul (5-6), huge start but really faltered along the way.
10. Augustana (4-7), awesome D, challenged O.
10. Minnesota State-Moorhead (4-7), seemingly moving in the right direction. Are they the next UIU?
10. Northern State (4-7), predicted to be just over .500, like plenty of others, defense let them down.
13. Bemidji State (3-8), down year, very inconsistent.
14. Minnesota-Crookston (2-9), still about a 2 win team until they prove otherwise.
14. Minot State (2-9), should have been a bit better.
14. Wayne State (2-9), most disappointing team in the league.


Here are the playoff match-ups as it pertains to Region 3..


Most people will look at this draw and say, "both NSIC teams win in Round 1", and I'm not sure I can disagree. I will dig into these match-ups far more in the middle of the week.