One of the bigger question marks heading into Saturday night’s Bison at Northern Iowa game is the health status of the Panthers. It’s not certain how UNI came through its Big Ten matchups at Iowa and Wisconsin, two programs who tend to be constructed with physical players in mind, especially the Badgers.
UNI head coach Mark Farley was not specific with his injury list this week, both on the Missouri Valley Football Conference call and in a story in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier newspaper. Starting middle linebacker Max Busher and starting cornerback J.J. Swain did not play last week against Youngstown. He told the Courier he expects a couple of players back but that his team also lost a couple of players at Youngstown.
NDSU, meanwhile, will have cornerback Marcus Williams (knee) and receiver Ryan Smith (hamstring) back in the starting lineup. “Ryan is 100 percent,” head coach Craig Bohl said earlier this week. “He probably was close to 100 percent last week, but we wanted to make sure the hamstring is healed up.”
Someone said this on Panthernation.com before the YSU game…
“Cutkomp done for the season, sad to say.”
Not sure if its true or not
UNI still run the 3-4 defense? Having LBs injured is not good. I sure hope the Bison OL can handle this 3-4 like they handled it last year in the UNI game and the Missouri state game.
UNI runs a 4-3 defense. They switched back to the 4-3 last year.
UNI’s coach likes to hide things from the Bison. He unveiled the 3-4 defense and Terrell Rennie the last time the Bison played at UNI.
We handled the 3-4 defense last time because Austin Richard moved to center when we played teams that ran the 3-4. Bison O-line will miss his attitude and toughness.
UNI’s front 7 is down compared to last year. With LBers nursing injuries, I think our O-Line will be just fine.
UNI needs to respect our passing game more now. With our defense playing at a high level, I don’t think UNI will score enough to win.
I had heard some scoop that their Qb was injured at Youngstown. He had a great game and the stats seem that he was not injured, but keep in mind, UNI does not like NDSU and that goes back long before Coach K and Andre came aboard to the good guys. My worry is their cheap play. They are at home and are backed into a corner. They are always and still will be physical, I only hope it is clean not chippy and dirty like they have been in the past.
Even without total knowledge of who is injured or not, you have to believe they are dinged up after the schedule they have played so far. We have had key injuries with a much less physical schedule to date.
I watched the end of the UNI vs YSU game and UNI’s QB was still in there at the end of the game. From what I could tell he was not hurt during the game.
Oh that wile ole Coach Farley. He plays such fun mind games. Closed circuit to coach, Bill Belichick you are not.
IMO, NDSU will stay with our game, even if UNI get chippy. Hopefully we can point to the scoreboard and walk away. I doesn’t do anything positive to participate when egged on, unless you are in an alley without Refs.
I’m quite sure the officiating crew will do a good job of keeping the game under control. If they can’t, that crew shouldn’t be working MVFC games. With that said, I think the over/under for personal fouls committed by UNI is 4. Hey, the game is what it is.