NOTEWORTHY GAME RESULTS FROM SATURDAY’S ACTION

Rivalry Renewed Rocked – For the first time in decades the Baker University Wildcats and the Ottawa (KS) Braves played each other in a football game. Victory Sports Network featured it as their VSN Game of the Week in free streaming video last night at 7PM EST. Braves player Clarence “The Bad C.A.” Anderson took the opening kickoff back for a touchdown. This 7-0 score held up all the way to half-time with both teams missing field goals during the rest of the 1st half. In the 2nd half Ottawa started to pull away with the Wildcats playing catch-up and the final score was 24-14, Ottawa Braves. This result was welcomed by fans of the Braves’ conference, the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference, who often feel that Heart of America Athletic Conference fans look down on their league. Trash-talking on the boards last night got intense. For the full schedule of VSN’s Game of the Week webcasts for 2010 click here: https://glitternight.com/2010/08/20/victory-sports-networks-naia-game-of-the-week-schedule-is-out/ 

Bowled Over By The Big River Bowl – Plenty of eyes were on The Big River Bowl matchup between the 8th-ranked McKendree Bearcats and the 11th-ranked Cumberlands Patriots. The Bearcats trailed in the 4th quarter but came back to win 34-27 led by Jimmy “Grizzly” Berezik . Berezik was the game’s MVP with 152 rushing yards on 14 carries.

Hardrockin’ and Orediggin’ – In one of the tightest games of the day the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology Hardrockers defeated the Montana Tech Orediggers 13-6. The game was tied up 6-6 for quite a while before the Hardrockers won it 13-6. Last night most of my blog’s hits that came from search engines were from people looking for the result of this game so obviously there was a lot of interest out there.

Bittersweet Historical Night – The good news is that Saturday night the Notre Dame College Falcons played their first intercollegiate football game in the school’s 88 year history. The bad news is they went up against NCAA Division  2’s Mercyhurst Lakers and lost 23-0. Next Saturday NDC will be in the history books again as they go on the road to take on the Lindsey Wilson College Blue Raiders, who will be playing in their first intercollegiate game since the school discontinued football 75 years ago.  

No Upsets Of D2 Schools – …And that item leads us into this one. Unfortunately no NAIA teams upset any of the NCAA Division 2 teams they went up against on opening week. For new followers of lower division sports let me point out that just as Division 1A schools often schedule 1AA opponents for an early-season game the same thing is done down the line, with 1AA teams often scheduling D2 teams for an early-season game and D2 teams often scheduling NAIA or D3 teams. The closest this year’s crop of NAIA schools came to an upper-division upset was when the Southern Nazarene Crimson Storm was tied up 21-21 with the Eastern New Mexico Greyhounds. Unfortunately the final score wound up being 59-21. It makes you long for last season when the NAIA Champion Sioux Falls Cougars thrashed Division ONE’s North Dakota Fighting Sioux, or Fighting Sue, or Fight’N’Sue, or whatever they change their name to.

Other Thoughts – A mild surprise of the night came from the Montana State-Northern Lights win over the Montana Western Bulldogs 20-3. Pretty interesting what this does to the Frontier Conference race right out of the gate…The Southern Oregon Raiders may move into the polls after they upset the 21st-ranked Eastern Oregon Mountaineers 34-30…The Peru State Bobcat’s hopes of being ranked suffered a setback when they lost to the Concordia (NE) Bulldogs 13-7…The Belhaven Blazers made their case to join the rankings by blasting the Texas College Steers 53-3.