WSU could face backup quarterback

[jimdahl]

Winona Daily News (This is the same AP story I've seen in quite a few places)

Not much new:

"If he's not 100 percent, we're not going to throw him out there," UND coach Dale Lennon said. "We have a lot of faith in both of our quarterbacks. It's nice that we have the quality backup so we don't have to ask someone to play hurt."

On WSU's offense:

One worry is the difficulty in handling Winona's unorthodox offense two years ago. UND defeated the Warriors 42-28 in the 2001 playoffs on the way to the national championship, but not before the stout Sioux defense had surrendered the most points in any game that season.

On big victories this season:

Another worry is that the Warriors own wins over Missouri Western and Emporia (Kan.) State, teams that shared in the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association title, and South Dakota State, a team the Sioux beat 25-24 on a last-second touchdown and two-point conversion.

On how much older this team is than the one we faced in 2001:

It's a veteran Winona team that starts eight seniors on both offense and defense and has 23 seniors overall.

"They have 13 starters who also started against us in the 2001 game, so they have played a lot of football," Lennon said. "And they're a hungry football team that plays very, very hard."

[UND92,96]

This article is in the Winona paper today.

This is my favorite quote:

"We played them a few years ago, and we thought we could beat them," WSU senior cornerback Steven Koehler said. "We lost to (the team) that won it all, and we almost beat them."

I guess he was playing in a different game from the one I was watching. It's one thing to not get blown out, but let's not go overboard here. Generally speaking, when you score a touchdown with 25 seconds remaining in the game to cut the lead from 21 to 14, it's not "almost winning." They didn't even turn the ball over once, so they can't even use the Pitt St. excuse of "you just got lucky that we turned the ball over so many times" (as if the turnovers were completely unforced). Winona made some big plays and scored some points the last time around, but when you give up 42 points and over 500 yards of offense, your defense peformed very badly, and you certainly did not deserve to win.

Obviously, we'll see in a few hours what today's game brings, but I'm getting sick of reading revisionist history about a game from two years ago which has no bearing at all on what happens today.

If the Sioux don't play well today, then they can certainly lose. But I do believe that UND is considerably better than UMD and Emporia St.--both of whom played the Warriors to within seven points AT Winona in the past two weeks.

[WYOBISONMAN]

Not good having the back-up playing. I still hope the Sioux blow them out and show the NSIC that they are not a real D2 conference, but the back-up situation makes me a little nervous. Damn, it you guys loose I will be eating crow over on D2, and probably be getting sh*t from some of my fellow Bison fans...

[UND92,96]

Not good having the back-up playing.  I still hope the Sioux blow them out and show the NSIC that they are not a real D2 conference, but the back-up situation makes me a little nervous.  Damn, it you guys loose I will be eating crow over on D2, and probably be getting sh*t from some of my fellow Bison fans...

Bowenkamp's injury is supposedly just a bruised lower leg, so I would expect that he'll play. I'm pretty sure he's been practicing all week. But even if he doesn't start, I have a lot of confidence in Wilson. He can play. He wasn't great last week, but he hadn't played in over a month and probably didn't get all that many reps with the starters in practice the week before the Pitt St. game. Now, with a half of football under his belt and a full week of practice, he should be ready to go.