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St. Cloud State University
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Sports
Defense shines in the clutch
By Matt Janda
Published:
Monday, September 30, 2002
Last week, SCSU strong safety and defensive captain Nate Loughran was talking about his 3-0 defense like they hadn’t done much to warrant praise. Their wins over Northern Michigan, Northern State and South Dakota weren’t exactly hotly contested fracases.
“We’ve played well in three halves,” Loughran said. “We haven’t played anybody spectacular to test us yet to see what we’re really capable of.”
After SCSU defeated South Dakota State Saturday at Selke Field, we’ve got a better idea what these Huskies are capable of. The Huskies were dealt a poor hand on Saturday. As their reputation says, they are slow starters on defense and were exposed by Dan Fjeldheim in the first quarter. He passed for 172 yards and two touchdowns on 10 completions.
Last year’s Huskies might have laid down, as they did when they got behind at Nebraska-Omaha late in the season. Not this season. The Huskies battled back and got into the game when SDSU committed some undisciplined penalties. But Fjeldheim’s aerial assault continued until he had racked up 460 yards through the air.
The Jacks only ran the ball 11 times in the second half and threw 28 passes. When a team abandons the run, it usually means they are way behind, but SDSU thought they had uncovered a weakness. So the defense’s first real test was at hand. Actually, it turned out to be more of a pop quiz.
“We weren’t expecting (55 passes) going into the game, we thought they were going to run it right at us the whole game,” Loughran said. “They came out totally opposite, and we just had to adjust. It wasn’t that big of a deal.”
Even though the Jacks didn’t run much, the secondary got a lot of help from their study buddies up front. Defensive linemen Jeremy Pilarski, Bryan Cook, Nick Peterson, Gabe Padayo and Cory Johnsen all made significant contributions throughout the game. They came up big when the d-backs needed them the most: at the end. It was a perfect finish for a squad that has traditionally had trouble putting teams away.
“We were playing so hard out there. It was unbelievable,” Pilarski said. “I knew we had it in us to step it up and I think we did today, finally. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had playing football.”
The true measure of a winning defense is exactly that: in wins. Total yards mean little to a team that doesn’t win. The Huskies are working on perfecting that style of defense: give them an inch, then take the ball away. They have three more turnovers, bringing their season total to 15.
Will they win the Division II national title? Probably not. Will they win the NCC? Possibly. Even if they don’t win the conference, they’ve already won each other’s trust. When you’re playing on a team that has won eight games in the last three years, sometimes it’s all you have. Tuesday they’ll be back to work preparing for the Augustana Vikings. But they’ll savor this victory as long as they possibly can, because it could be the one that told the world that they’ve turned the corner.
“It’s the best thing that could’ve happened to us,” Loughran said. “I heard people talking about how we gave up a lot of yards, but it doesn’t matter how many yards we give up, it’s what the score is at the end of the game.”
