Dustin

So my take on the game: Offense - advantage UND Defense - draw Special Teams - advantage WSU Keys to the game for a UND victory: Score when given your chances on offense. Rely on your defense to get the ball back to the offense. Obviously, well executed special teams would be ideal, but a flub is probably ok, so long as it is not a scoring play for them.

My recollection from the Montana game is that he'd put a kickoff around the 13 yard line. If Leach can indeed kick it into the end zone, I would hope they would instruct him to do so in this game.

It would be tough to outbid UNI, according to my NDSU alum coworker.

My thoughts exactly. Second week in a row where someone beat me to my score!

http://www.fcs.football/cfb/story.asp?i=20181024123148897506504 "Game of the Week"

http://www.fcs.football/cfb/story.asp?i=20181024123148897506504 Our game is being named "Game of the Week."

http://www.fcs.football/cfb/story.asp?i=20181023110340617393804&ref=hea&tm=&src=FCS UNI @ UND, winner to #6 seed SDSU.

Unless I have no other way to follow the game, I generally stay off the game-day thread while the game is going on. I will look at it before, then after, I generally skip to the post game discussion.

The good thing is that we have many scoring plays that originate outside of the red zone.

http://www.collegesportsmadness.com/fcs-football/top-25-rankings Not sure if anyone has posted this yet. UND at #14. “UND (5-2) is hot right now, winning three in a row. Weber State visits in what might be their final major test before the playoffs.”

http://www.collegesportsmadness.com/fcs-football/bracketology UND hosts UNI in the first round, winner to play NDSU.

http://www.fcs.football/cfb/polls.asp?div=fcs UND at #22. Weber St. at #4. SHSU at #23. Montana and Idaho St. receiving votes.

Agreed. I’d say 9-2 would be enough for a seed, but that’s just my Kelly green glasses.

With each week, I am feeling that this is going to happen.

http://www.fcs.football/cfb/story.asp?i=20181016095048548571304&ref=rec&tm=308&src=CFB This is last week's bracketology from STATS that I don't believe anyone posted. It has UNI coming to Grand Forks, with the winner going to Brookings. I expect that to change once new predictions come out this week.

In addition to UND being #16, I also noticed that UNI's win is getting a lot of love from the pollsters. They're up to #11.

"11. FCS Independents – With each week, North Dakota is looking more like a playoff team."

When you look at it this way, I feel quite confident that UND will be able to put up at least that many points. And if Weber's offense is their weakness, I would tend to agree that UND's defense could hold them to just a few scoring opportunities.

Don't know much about Weber State, other than that they are ranked highly in the polls - is their defensive strength the run game or the passing game? What kind of offensive scheme will Rudy need to keep Weber's defense off-balance?

So it sounds like a defensive score would be a key to winning the game.

Other than FBS Washington, yes.

Should have gotten mine in sooner, that’s the score I was going with! I’ll tack on a touchdown and go 38-14.

May as well burn it - this team can go places, and you should put people in a position to succeed.

No question these are my favorite Sioux jerseys of all time.

In 2016, I think it was actually a little bit of a curse being seeded and having the first round playoff bye. Our bye week that year was also the last week of the season, so we had three weeks in between football games. I think we would have done better playing a home first-round game to get our feet wet, and then go from there. This year, with our bye week in the middle of the season, I don't see any reason to not want a seed. A seed is so beneficial (or at least can be) to teams because they get a bye after a long season, and then a home playoff game.