Stick trips up Eastern in Frisco

Easton Stick stuck it to Eastern Washington in a big way last Saturday in Frisco, Texas.

The senior quarterback scored three touchdowns — including the backbreaker in the final 1 minute, 16 seconds — and threw for two more as the North Dakota State Bison defeated the Eagles 38-24 to win a record seventh Football Championship Subdivision title in front of 17,802 at Toyota Stadium.

Stick was his team’s leading rusher with 18 carries and 121 yards, plus 13 of 19 passing for 198 yards and a pair of TD passes. The Bison had a 488-357 advantage in total offense.

Stick, the gold jerseys and green helmets he and the Bison wore, and his coach Chris Klieman, go out big winners in Texas — again.

But it was not until the Bison recovered an onside kick with 2:15 remaining that Stick could take over and deliver the dagger, a 45-yard touchdown run down the NDSU sideline.

Moments before, Eastern’s redshirt sophomore Eric Barriere completed a swift four-play, 80-yard drive with his five-yard touchdown run around the right side that closed the game to a one-possession affair at 31-24 with 2:15 to play. Barriere finished 13 of 25 for 198 yards, but had two interceptions.

“We played our tails off,” Eastern head coach Aaron Best said. “I thought we more than held our own for a lengthy period of time.”

But in the end, Eastern (12-3) was never able to completely dig itself out of 10-0 and 17-3 holes, although they came tantalizingly close all game. The Bison, 15-0, however, had answers every time.

For instance, there was the Eagles’ first touchdown. It came on a fake field goal where holder and backup quarterback Gunner Talkington pulled down the snap and made a quick shovel pass to Jayce Gilder with 27 seconds remaining in the first half. That cut the Bison lead to 17-10.

Instead of being able to take advantage of getting the ball to open the third quarter, the Eagles turned the ball over on one play with a Barriere interception. They got it back a play later with D’londo Tucker’s interception, but coughed it up four plays later on a Talkington fumble as he briefly subbed for Barriere.

That comedy of errors gave way to a bizarre scoring explosion that spanned 1:08 and produced 21 points.

Following the fumble recovery, it took just three plays for Stick to loft a perfect pass down the left sideline for a 23-yard scoring strike to Darrius Shepherd and a 24-10 lead with 11:52 to play in the third, the first of his two scores.

Eastern’s Sam McPherson needed just one play and 12 seconds to make it 24-17 on his 75-yard run, but Stick’s loft down the right sideline caught Shepherd in stride and he sped 78-yards for a TD capping a two-play 56-second drive that once again gave the Bison a two score lead at 31-17 with 10:44 to play in the third. McPherson had 158 yards on 18 carries in Frisco.

Once the Texas touchdown tornado blew through, the teams essentially settled into trading punts through the remainder of the third and early fourth quarters.

The Bison got the ball back on a punt at its own 6 with 13:31 to play in the game and slowly grazed their way down the natural grass field to the EWU 6 where Cam Pedersen inexplicably shanked a 24-yard field goal wide with 3:21 to play, setting up the last Eagle scoring drive.

That helped the Bison earn a two-to-one advantage in time of possession: 40:05 to 19:55 and Klieman said that was crucial. “The time of possession was huge,” he said. “And we were able to control the football and control the clock.”

Klieman now changes zip codes from Fargo to Manhattan, Kan. and a reported $2.3 million to replace retiring Bill Snyder as the Wildcats’ head coach. He takes a fourth FCS championship and a 68-6 record with him.

NDSU built a 10-0 lead after the first quarter on a Pedersen field goal and Stick’s first touchdown. A 40-yard Roldan Alcobendas field goal cut it to 10-3 with 13:49 to play in the half, but Stick struck again six minutes later with his two-yard effort building the Bison lead back to 17-3.

“We had self-inflicted wounds and you can’t do that against anybody, especially on this stage,” Best said.

Notable were a string of penalties, particularly on the Eagles’ first possession where an illegal formation wiped out a Barriere to Dennis Merritt connection to the Bison 9. Then on Eastern’s third possession, back-to-back calls (holding and intentional grounding) stymied a drive at midfield.

Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].