It may seem as if South Dakota State isn’t at all the same football team that rumbled over Cal Poly last year.
There’s no more Cory Koenig, the senior running back who took 21 carries for 259 yards and four touchdowns – including three on distances of 32, 46 and 52 yards – in the second-most dominant rushing performance ever allowed by Cal Poly.
“They ran the ball all over us just running the same play every time,” Mustangs junior safety David Fullerton remembered.
And quarterback Ryan Berry – now a senior – is throwing nearly eight more passes per game than he did a year ago and almost 18 more per game than the mere 20 he had to loft against the Mustangs last season.
Cal Poly head coach Rich Ellerson isn’t buying it heading into the teams’ meeting at 4 p.m. Saturday in Brookings, S.D.
“I still feel like the personality of their football team is in their physical running game,” he said. “They do things the old-fashioned way.”
Whatever way they’ve done it, the Jackrabbits have done it well against the Mustangs lately, scoring 23 unanswered points in the final eight minutes of a 29-28 win in San Luis Obispo in 2006 and never trailing during a 48-35 win at Coughlin-Alumni Stadium last year.
“They’ve had our number,” Ellerson said.
Maybe it’s because they’ve had so much time to decipher it.
After losing the first two installments of the series in 2004 and 2005, the Jackrabbits placed a bye before the meeting each of the past two seasons. This year is no different.
“They do a good job of trying to schedule a bye before they play us,” Ellerson said. “They recognize the challenge that we present because of our uniqueness and they try to do a good job of mitigating that by having the extra preparation time.”
That break may have stung more this year.
The Jackrabbits (3-3) lost to McNeese State 46-44 in triple overtime Oct. 4.
“That was the toughest loss we’ve suffered in my tenure,” 12th-year Jackrabbits head coach John Stiegelmeier said. “I think the healing over the bye was good – not the healing of our bodies, but the healing of our spirit.”
Stiegelmeier was straightforward when asked if the game is must-win in order to stay in the playoff hunt.
“It is,” he said.
The Mustangs (3-1) are also coming off of a bye, after breezing by South Dakota 49-22 Oct. 4.
They matched their highest ranking ever Monday by rising to No. 3 in the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA) coaches poll and No. 5 in the Sports Network media poll.
Stiegelmeier reiterated Ellerson’s assertion that the Jackrabbits – ranked No. 21 by the media and No. 22 by the coaches – served themselves well by deliberately placing the bye where they did.
“I think, advantage Jackrabbits, because of (Cal Poly’s) unique systems,” he said.
South Dakota State is 105th in the FCS in points allowed per game, at 33.5. That number might be even worse if not for 11 interceptions, the sixth-best total in the country.
If there were a team to mend those fences against, it wouldn’t figure to be Cal Poly.
The Mustangs’ averages of 459.3 yards and 39.5 points per game are both fifth in the FCS, senior receiver Ramses Barden’s 156.5 receiving yards per game are the most in all of Division I and senior quarterback Jonathan Dally is yet to be intercepted and leads the FCS in passing efficiency.
South Dakota State won’t be ill equipped in a shootout, though. Its 407 yards per game rank 25th in the FCS.
Sophomore running back Kyle Minett is the Jackrabbits’ leading rusher with 527 yards and nine touchdowns on 125 carries.
“He’s great,” Fullerton said. “That’s a big part of what we focused on. The last few games we’ve missed some tackles.”
Berry has completed 64 percent of 225 passes for 1,722 yards and nine touchdowns with nine interceptions. His primary target is senior receiver JaRon Harris, who has team highs of 35 catches for 545 yards and five scores.
“They’re a pretty well-rounded team,” Fullerton said.
Were the Mustangs’ numbers totals and not per-game averages, they wouldn’t rank as highly. McNeese State’s third-week cancellation of the teams’ would-be meeting left the Mustangs with three byes over a five-week period that just finished.
“It was good to have those bye weeks to stay healthy,” Fullerton said. “But now, after this week, it’s going to feel more like a regular football season.”