Good Morning Sunshine!
After a comeback victory in their last game against the St. Ambrose Fighting Bees, the Southern Oregon University Raiders are meeting up with a Mustang of a team as they travel back to Iowa to face thrid-ranked Morningside.
The Mustangs are undefeated at 11-0 but were faced with a tough test last Saturday against Montana Tech. The Orediggers are similar to the Raiders in that they run a quick-tempo, Oregon Duck-isc offense that shown the weakness in the Mustangs conditioning in the Mustangs narrow 40-35 victory last Saturday.
In the NAIA quarterfinals, both team are a combined 1-7; Moringiside are 1-4 and the Raiders are 0-3, and never have faced each other.
Moringside has only allowed double-digits twice all season defensively; as they are first in rushing defense and scoring defense. Permitting 56 yards a game on the ground and 8.4 points a game.
They are in the top 10 in 17 different catorgies in the NAIA, all but three are in the top five.
In total defense, the Mustangs live up to the horse their named for, ranking third in the nation. Holding opponents to a low 254 yards of total defense while getting pressure on opposing quarterbacks with an average of seven sacks a game.
In offense they are third in the nation in total offense, fourth in Scoring Offense per Game, and third in Total Offense Yds per Game with 491.
Impressive ain’t I right?
The Raiders can put up some statistics on offense as well, being that they are leading the nation in Pass Offense per Game with 449.2 a game, tops in nation in Scoring Offense per Game with 53.5 a game.
Southern Oregon’s offense can beat you in the nitty gritty of it, converting third downs 51.7 percent of the time, best in the nation in third down conversion.
They’re offensive line is as mean as their statistics and will get dirty as needs be. Defenses are lucky to get a finger on Austin Dodge through this line as Dodge has only been sacked three times! The Raiders defense are averaging as many sacks on opposing quarterbacks as Dodge has been brought down this year.
As for the Raiders defense. They are a smash mouth, beat us, dare us, come after us defense. Their front seven has racked up 30 sacks, average 8 tackles-for-losses a game, and have tallied 11 interceptions this season.
This defense won’t win no beauty contest on paper, but they step up when they have too.
As they must as they are facing a Mustang squad that have a deep running back corp and a quarterback as good as Austin Dodge.
The key’s to victory for the Raiders on Saturday must be sticking to their guns with their high tempo offense, Montana Tech has proved last week against Moringside that the Mustangs aren’t ready to face a fast paced offense.
Defense needs to step up early. They have shown countless times that they are good on the field, shutting down team’s in the clutch, showing that Southern Oregon is a force to be reckon with in the NAIA.
But as we saw last week against St. Ambrose; if you don’t step up early, turnovers or not, you’ll be playing catch up and relying on the offense to finish it off after you got them the ball back.
It’s a game of inches, one play can make the difference. And the difference in this game must be the Southern Oregon defense.
Finally, Southern Oregon needs to throw and throw often against Moringside. The Mustangs are 50th in the nation in defense against the pass, allowing more than 198 a game. That will not be with Dodge, whom has thrown 4632 yards this season with Cole McKensie, Patrick Donahue and Michael Olson at his arsenal.
Kickoff on the frontier is set for noon central time, 10 am in Ashland on the west coast.
sources:
JMcDonaldMedia 
Leave a comment