Bison rally to roll over Eagles 42-20

FARGO, N.D. - For the better part of a quarter at least, the North Dakota State Bison remained quite docile. But for the final three quarters of their Football Championship Subdivision playoff game against Eastern Washington, they ran wild, literally stampeding past the Eagles 42-20 in the Fargodome on April 24.

The Eagles bolted out of the gate taking early leads of 14-0 and 20-7, but the Bison scored the final 35 unanswered points and rolled over Eastern on the ground, racking up 422 rushing yards.

After losing to Eastern in the first meeting between the schools in a 2010 playoff game, North Dakota State has now won four in a row, twice in the postseason.

"They dictated the tempo in the second half and did what they do best - and that's run the ball, move the sticks and stay on the field," Eastern head coach Aaron Best said. The Eagles saw their five-game winning streak end and conclude the winter/spring truncated season end with a 5-2 record.

NDSU, which travels to Sam Houston State (7-0) for a round-2 game, was virtually unstoppable after Eastern took that early lead on 3-yard touchdown runs by Tamarick Pierce and Eric Barriere about four minutes apart in the first quarter.

A Barriere to Andrew Boston 3-yard touchdown pass made it 20-7 but Seth Harrison's point-after sailed wide right, the first of a series of events that swung momentum back to the Bison. NDSU's first possession of the game resulted in a punt after a net -1 yards. Their next three of the opening half were all touchdowns.

Leading 20-14, a costly sack of Barriere forced Eastern into attempting a 54-yard field goal by Harrison. While nearly perfect in its trajectory, the kick fell just a few yards short and the Bison scored on their next possession and took a 21-20 lead to the break.

"We were down just 21-20 at halftime and just couldn't continue the momentum in the second half," Best said.

Eastern got a glimmer of hope stopping NDSU on its first drive of the second half a yard short on fourth-and-four at the Eagle 38. However, one play later, Barriere was intercepted and the Bison turned that into a score and a 28-21 lead.

For the game Barriere still had pretty stout numbers that will likely not hurt him in pursuit of winning the Walter Payton Award as the top offensive player in FCS football. He finished 17-of-28 for 246 yards passing plus 32 on the ground. The Big Sky Conference Offensive MVP also went over the milestone 10,000-yard mark in total offense in his career in the first half.

"They did what they intended to do and that was keep our No. 3 (Barriere) off the field," Best said. "They did a great job of that in the second half."

The Bison had the ball for 21 minutes, 50 seconds out of 30 minutes in the second half and had a slim 16:27 to 13:33 edge in the first.

"Time of possession wasn't in our favor and we couldn't get off the field on defense in the second half after battling immensely in the first 30 minutes," Best said.

Eastern allowed North Dakota State to just over 2 yards on its first four rushes and 3.5 on its first nine. But the Bison finished the game with 422 on 57 plays for an average of 7.4 per carry.

Noah Gindorff and Dominic Gonnella each had a pair of touchdowns for NDSU, which improved to 7-2. Gonnella also rushed for 163 yards, tops in the game.

Boston was EWU's leading receiver with five catches for 88 yards, but Talolo Limu-Jones was limited to just 38 yards, ending his run of 100-yard receiving games at three. Defensively, linebacker Jack Sendelbach had 13 tackles to lead Eastern.

Paul Delaney is a retired Free Press Publishing reporter and can be reached at [email protected].