Big Sky Conference

North Dakota has crafted an offensive philosophy to match defensive identity

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During North Dakota’s first season in the Big Sky Conference in 2012, it seemed like the team would fit right in to a league filled with offensively explosive teams at seemingly every turn.

That fall, North Carolina transfer Braden Hanson and incumbent senior Marcus Hendrickson combined to throw 30 touchdowns as UND averaged nearly 300 passing yards and 33.5 points per game. The quick-strike ability of former head coach Chris Mussman’s offense was on full display in a 40-34 win over Montana. Hansen set a Big Sky record with 660 passing yards. Junior wide receiver Greg Hardin hauled in 12 passes for a Big Sky-record 333 yards, including the game-winning touchdown, a 32-yard score with 12 seconds left.

Former UND wide receiver Greg Hardin/by UND Athletics

Former UND wide receiver Greg Hardin/by UND Athletics

That season, UND finished 5-6 but the future looked promising with Hardin, Jameer Jackson and Kenny Golloday returning to form one of the league’s most physically talented receiving corps. In 2013, the redshirt freshmen duo of Ryan Bartels and Joe Mollberg took over under center. UND threw for 284 yards per game as Gollday (69 catches for 884 yards, 8 TDs), Hardin (67 catches for 1,153 yards and five TDs) helped UND move the ball. But a porous defense that struggled to keep points down (34 points per game) and an offense that couldn’t keep pace with the Big Sky’s big guns resulted in a 3-8 record. Mussman and his staff were fired after the off-season.

In two years under new head coach Bubba Schweigert, North Dakota has put a strong priority on redefining its identity. In Schweigert’s first year, UND reinstalled the 3-4 defense Schweigert helped the school employ en route to the 2001 Division II national championship. Improved tackling and an elevated effort helped North Dakota post a 5-7 record despite averaging a league-low 15.9 points per game.

This season, North Dakota has made a concerted effort to enforce an offensive strategy that matches its defensive identity in physicality and effort but that can also manufacture points. The hard-hitting, blitzing defensive style paired with a ball control offensive style that puts a priority on running down the play clock and grinding out yards between the tackles makes UND appear as the outlier in a conference where seven teams are averaging at least 31.4 points and eight teams are averaging at least 408 yards per game.

UND enters Saturday’s matchup against No. 19 Montana State with a 4-4 mark despite averaging 21.9 points (11th in the Big Sky) and a league-low 324.4 yards per game.

UND running back John Santiago looks for space against Montana/by Evan Frost

UND running back John Santiago looks for space against Montana/by Evan Frost

“There’s a really good catharsis going on at UND in the offense,” Idaho State head coach Mike Kramer, a head coach in the league since 1994, said leading up to his team’s 37-31 victory in Grand Forks earlier this month. “Coming out of the North Dakota State juncture, I’m sure everyone in the conference thought, ‘Oh, say UND, great defense, no offense.’ But they’ve found a way to move the ball and score points. When I watch them, they are like no one else in this conference. They look like a team straight out of the Missouri Valley.”

Indeed, North Dakota’s style is more similar to a team in the rough and tumble Missouri Valley Conference than the wide-open Big Sky. That is by design.

“We’ve made it a priority to make sure we are a ball-control football team at the Unversity of North Dakota,” Rudolph said. “We want to be different than anyone else in the Big Sky as much as we can be on the offensive side.

“We think in the Midwest, that’s more of the type of guys we can recruit. When you get into North Dakota and Minnesota, there’s some spread offense but in the rural parts of the Midwest, in all honesty you still see versions of the Wing-T, Power I, running the football down hill. It’s more of our Midwest style.”

Rudolph has spent his 23-year coaching in the Midwest. From 1992 until 2000, he was the head coach at Upper Iowa. He served as the offensive coordinator at St. Cloud State (Minnesota) from 2000 until 20006. Between 2007 and 2013, Rudolph served as the head coach at Minot State as the Beavers transitioned from NAIA to Division II. At each stop, Rudolph put a priority on rushing the football.

UND wide receiver Luke Stanley makes a catch against Drake/by Matt Schill

UND wide receiver Luke Stanley makes a catch against Drake/by Matt Schill

“This system, all the stuff we run, it’s been the same since 1989,” Rudolph said. “Not a thing has changed from a formationa standpoint and how we call stuff. There’s some Wing-T philosophy to it, some I-back philosophy to it. There’s some spread system philosophy to it. We’ve tried to take each unique thing and adapt it to our unique self.”

Schweigert made Rudolph his first hire. He wanted an offensive coach that could demand the same sort of toughness and identity out of the offensive players as Schweigert hopes personifies his defense. The start contrast in style included a few growing pains in 2014 as UND rushed for just 116.4 yards per game and averaged a league-low 254.3 yards per outing.

“It took a little bit of getting used to,” senior captain guard Brandon Anderson said last week. “You have a lot of guys here, myself included that it’s not the style we were used to. It definitely took some time getting used to going back to the run game and knowing you are going to run on it on first, second and third down no matter what. You really need to put your nose to the grindstone and understand that is what is going to happen. You have to do your job on every play.

“It’s what you want to do as an offensive lineman. You don’t want to be set back on every single play taking it in the face.”

The UND offense experienced an outlier game in a 34-9 loss at No. 2 North Dakota State. The four-time defending FCS national champions smothered North Dakota, holding the visitors from Grand Forks to four yards rushing and just three first downs.

UND wide receiver Josh Seibel makes a catch against Drake/by Tyler Ingham

UND wide receiver Josh Seibel makes a catch against Drake/by Tyler Ingham

Take that game out of the statistics and UND is averaging 224 rushing yards per game. During a 2-3 start in conference play, North Dakota is averaging 251.2 rushing yards per game against Big Sky teams. UND possesses the ball for nearly 32 minutes per game, third in the league, despite ranking dead last in the league with 16 first downs per game.

“They are on the ball for a long time, one of the longest snap count teams I’ve ever seen,” Montana State head coach Rob Ash said. “You have to be very patient, watch the ball as a defense and be ready to trigger when they finally snap it.”

Ash’s Bobcats are setting the pace in the high-flying Big Sky. Montana State leads the conference in scoring (45.9 points per game) with the balanced offense throwing for 316 yards per game (2nd in the league) and rushing for 224 yards per game (third in the league). UND’s run defense has been the league’s best, allowing just 82.4 yards per outing, 2.6 yards per carry and just three totally touchdowns.

“It will be an interesting clash of styles because they really want to possess the football, they are very patient, they run the ball extremely well and want to keep it away from you,” Ash said. “On defense, they try to get you out of drives quickly, get the ball back and hog it some more. On the other side, we want to try to get into a high scoring game and have multiple possessions and go up and down the field and that’s tough to do against their style of play.”

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About Colter Nuanez

Colter Nuanez is the co-founder and senior writer for Skyline Sports. After spending six years in the newspaper industry with stops at the Missoulian, the Ellensburg Daily Record and the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, the former Washington Newspaper Association Sportswriter of the Year and University of Montana Journalism School graduate ('09) has cultivated a deep passion for sports journalism during his 13-year career covering the Big Sky Conference. In August of 2014, Colter and brother Brooks merged their passions of writing and art to found Skyline Sports.

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