Five things to watch in Mercer at NDSU football game

Fargo Theres a certain investigative reporter mentality with your favorite Five Things columnist anytime North Dakota State gets a new opponent into the Fargodome.

Who are these guys? What makes them tick? ADVERTISEMENT In true reporter fashion, Five Things has been on the lookout for a connection to this years newbie, Mercer University from Macon, Georgia.

Five Things has a college friend who once was the city manager for Macon, Missouri, and one of the first things he did back in the 1980s was institute a town slogan: Macon Progress.

Get it? As in makin progress? The best Five Things could do this week is Jay January.

Sounds like a perfect name for North Dakota.

Through a local media source, it came to my attention that Jay January was a guard at Minot High School until he moved to Texas to finish his prep career.

January played his college ball at Mercer from 2001-04 and graduated in mass communication/media studies.

Hes one of us scribes in the college curriculum, kind of.

So therein lies any sort of connection, a major reach if there ever was one.

At least in the regular season, a communications professor at Colorado is an NDSU graduate and had Deion Sanders speak to his class, East Tennessee States radio play-by-play voice worked for a Fargo station and Murray States quarterbacks coach played at NDSU.

Solid connections to Fargo.

Abilene Christian? Five Things ran into nothing.

Mercer? Not much.

At least there is a Division I FCS quarterfinal football game to be played and things will be settled on the field.

Here are five things to watch in the Mercer at NDSU game: ADVERTISEMENT Mercer is long on history, with the school being named after a Baptist leader named Jesse Mercer.

He was one of the schools founders in 1833 and subsequently became known, and still is, for its fine academics.

Its just not long in football history.

The program started in 1892, but was dropped in 1917 because of World War I.

It was later reinstated but dropped again in 1941 because of World War II.

In 2013, it was brought back to life.

NDSU football, meanwhile, wasnt very good through the world wars until the 1960s when it established football prominence, giving the Bison a 60-year head start in tradition.

That can make a difference this time of the year.

The Bison like to run the ball.

Mercer likes to stop the other team from running the ball.

The Bears are very good at it, too, leading Division I FCS in rushing defense giving up just 66.0 yards per game.

That not only leads the FCS, but it does so by a pretty good margin.

Tennessee Tech is next at 82.9 yards per game.

The Bears stingy total includes giving up 189 yards at Alabama.

It will make for an interesting first quarter for the Bison: will they even try to establish the run? Samford said the heck with it, passing for 378 and running for 68 in a 55-35 win over Mercer.

Alabama passed for 319 yards.

ADVERTISEMENT NDSU does have one of the most accurate passers in the FCS in quarterback Cam Miller.

There are a couple more interesting twists in Mercers run defense: Most of the teams the Bears played werent exactly rushing juggernauts over the course of the season.

Four opponents were 100th or worse out of 123 teams in rushing offense.

Four others were 59th or worse.

Then again, the best rushing offense the Bears played East Tennessee State which finished 20th in the FCS stats had only 13 yards rushing.

Then again, the Buccaneers threw for 459 yards in a 37-31 Mercer win.

Five Things has some advice for those trying to dissect all these rushing defense stats: Wait until after the first quarter to make any kind of determination with NDSU.

The Bison are 14th in the country in rushing offense at 200.6 yards per game.

The voters for the Southern Conference post-season awards didnt need much convincing.

Mercer defensive end Brayden Manley was named the leagues Defensive Player of the Year.

Defensive end Andrew Zock was named the Freshman of the Year.

Cornerback TJ Moore was one of 35 finalists for the Buck Buchanan Award along with Manley.

Moore and free safety Myles Redding each lead the FCS with seven interceptions.

Mercer leads the FCS with 42 quarterback sacks.

Theyve got two guys with seven interceptions, said Bison head coach Tim Polasek.

I respect their pass rush ability, if you give them an inch theyre going to take it.

Most impressively, they get off the field 75 percent on third down.

Were going to have to be on top of our stuff offensively.

I think this squad is going to be ready to go and were going to need to play our best football of the season.

ADVERTISEMENT NDSU is 9-0 against the Southern Conference, although the gap narrowed this year.

The Bison narrowly defeated East Tennessee 38-35 thanks to a rare onside kick recovery late in the game.

There were a few other close calls, too.

The Bison needed a school record 29 tackles for linebacker (and current NDSU defensive coordinator) Grant Olson to beat Wofford 14-7 in the 2012 quarterfinals.

One week later, they got a touchdown run from quarterback Brock Jensen on fourth down to beat Georgia Southern 23-20 in the semifinals.

A 27-9 win over Samford in the 2022 quarterfinals wasnt exactly a thorough victory.

Generally, however, the difference in leagues between the Missouri Valley and SoCon has been noticeable in December..

This article has been shared from the original article on thedickinsonpress, here is the link to the original article.