Husky Homecoming: blowout edition

The most that the Huskies football team has ever scored in a game was 71 back in 2006 against Minnesota-Crookston.

They looked to break that record on a cold homecoming Saturday.

They fell just short, winning the game 65-7. However they did lead 55-0 at halftime, which was a record.

The Huskies wasted no time putting points on the board. On their first offensive play senior quarterback Mitch Watkins hooked up with leading receiver Fred Williams on a 67 yard bomb.

After Justin Delgado missed the extra point, the Huskies were in the lead 6-0 with only 16 seconds off the clock.

“Scoring right away, it really helps everyone out, build on it get your confidence up,” said SCSU defensive linemen Ross Kees. “Everyone is psyched the whole time, it’s real easy to keep going from there.”

Kees was playing his first game back after missing three weeks with a sprained MCL in his right knee. He was grateful to come out with a fourth win in a row.

“It feels great, get on a roll, just keep winning. We have Duluth next week, get a win out of that, we’ll be top of the conference,” Kees said.

On Minnesota-Crookston second play, sophomore Matt Hansmann picked Golden Eagles quarterback Lon Garfield and returned it 45 yards for the touchdown.

After that the Huskies never looked back, scoring 34 points in the first quarter alone.

“It gives you great momentum you hope, when you come out and score like that, it gets everybody fired up, it changes the tables a little bit,” Underwood said, “the key thing for us is they know they all aren’t going to come simply, we liked them because we’ve been a long methodical drive type team. When you can combine those and make drives without stalling out, that shows character throughout the game.”

The Huskies certainly did that throughout the entire first half.

Coming out in the second half the Huskies did not look quite as sharp.

“Its pretty easy to lose your focus when you are up that much, but most of the guys out there were doing pretty good staying out there and staying in the game and not just letting up because [we] were up by so much,” Kees said.

He was happy with the defensive output the Huskies provided.

“It just helps us know that we can stop these guys, not let them score any points, unfortunately we did, but you know our first, second strings shut them out we just had a really good game today,” Kees said.

Underwood was not surprised by the Huskies’ secondary’s success in the game.

“The key thing is they gave them balls they could make breaks on, they were from one hash out to the other numbers, our guys caught made one guy miss and took it to the end zone,” Underwood said.

Despite such a lopsided victory Underwood still thinks there are things that need to be worked on.

“We had some guys that were mix-matched in there a little bit that haven’t played a lot of spots, that probably slowed us down a little bit, you know the biggest thing we had problems with were exchanges from center to quarterback and certainly some coverage stuff,” Underwood said.

The Huskies defense held the Golden Eagles to 93 total yards offense and only three of that came in the first half.

Five Huskies recorded sacks and Tyler Niedfeldt also turned an interception into points when he took a Tim Ennis pass 47 yards into the end zone.

Sophomore Brandon Geiss who had 78 yards and a touchdown and junior Donte Steward who each had 79 yards rushing and a touchdown led the Husky running game.

Before being pulled late in the first quarter senior Mitch Watkins was 7 for 9 for 135 yards and two touchdowns.

The second half was a different story for the Husky offense that only managed to score 10 points. However, they had a different game plan going into the second half.

“What we did was took all of our starters out of the game, put the guys who haven’t played much in, gave them opportunities, like ‘here’s your game-day experience’ gave all our kids a chance, lets see how you perform,” Underwood said.

Next week the Huskies travel to Duluth to take on the Bulldogs of Minnesota-Duluth.

The Bulldogs are undefeated in the NSIC this season and are ranked eighth in the nation.

Kickoff is scheduled for 1 p.m. at James S. Melosky Field.

Underwood hopes that this week’s win provides them with momentum heading into that game.

“We sure hope so--its better than losing, we know that,” Underwood said.