PREVIEW: Mercer meets No. 2 North Dakota State on national TV for FCS quarterfinals

The good news is that if your football team is playing a team from the Dakotas in December, it’s likely that your squad is in the FCS playoffs and having a quality season.

The bad news is that your football team is playing an opponent from the Dakotas.

Mercer will work on making this trip a whole lot better than the last one, a 41-0 loss a year ago at top seed South Dakota State. This time, the Bears head a little further north and visit No. 2 North Dakota State in the Football Championship Subdivision quarterfinals.

Kickoff is Saturday at 3:30 p.m. from the Fargodome, and the game will be shown on ABC. The winner faces either South Dakota State or Incarnate Word.

“We have an opportunity to go on the road and play in one of the best college football environments at any level in the Fargodome against the team that arguably, over the last 15 years or 20 years, has been really the lead at this level,” Mercer head coach Mike Jacobs said. “We’re looking forward to the challenge.”

It will be a challenge indeed, on a variety of levels.

The Bison have nine FCS national titles on their resume, the last one coming in 2021. Overall, they have 17 national titles including Division II championships. North Dakota State has reached the semifinals every season since 2011 except in 2020, the COVID year, when it lost in the second round.

“We don’t want to put them on a pedestal,” Mercer defensive back Myles Redding said. “We respect them. We understand that North Dakota State is one of the best FCS football programs in history.

“But we want to keep things about us, make sure we’re putting our best foot forward… We’re motivated to go up there and shock the world.”

Then there’s the Fargodome, a noise-holding facility seating 18,700 that opened in 1992. The Bison averaged 15,872 fans for seven home games this year, and they’ve lost only one playoff game there in 36 tries.

That came in 2016, a 27-17 defeat against James Madison, which went on to win the national title. NDSU’s overall record there is 183-28, an 86.7% rate.

It’s a different noise than playing at Alabama, which Mercer did this season.

“You guys will hear it all across campus and potentially downtown; we’ll have the speakers out,” Jacobs said of noise preparation. “We’ll pump in some crowd noise, just work on the non-verbal communication aspect of what we need to do.”

And there are differences this year for Mercer and the opposition.

Mercer was making its postseason debut a year ago, advancing with a 17-7 win over Gardner-Webb after getting one of the Southern Conference’s at-large bids. The Bears were 9-3, and were in and out of the national polls.

South Dakota State was undefeated and spent the year in the top of the polls en route to a dream 15-0 season that ended with a 22-3 win over Montana in the national championship game in Frisco, Texas.

This year, Mercer has spent more time in the national top 10 than on the outside. The Bears won the Southern Conference title outright to get the conference’s only postseason spot and earned a seventh seed and first-round bye in the playoffs.

Unlike its southern counterpart, North Dakota State isn’t amid such a dream season, entering with the same 11-2 record as Mercer. The Bison opened the season with an attention-getting 31-26 loss at FBS foe Colorado, but they ended the regular season with a 29-28 loss to No. 4 South Dakota, dropping those two teams into a tie with South Dakota State for the Missouri Valley Football Conference title.

The Bison got a battle from underdog No. 15 Abilene Christian before pulling away in the final quarter and a half for a 51-31 win.

It’s a battle of coaches new to their jobs. 

Tim Polosek is first-time head coach, a Wisconsin native who has coached at Wisconsin-Stevens Point, Northern Illinois, Iowa and Wyoming. He spent 2006-2012 at NDSU as a grad assistant, going on to coach running backs, tight ends, special teams and serve as offensive coordinator.

Jacobs, also 45, played at Ohio State and was an assistant at Eastern Michigan, Wilmington (Ohio), Purdue, California, Pennsylvania, and Notre Dame College in Ohio before going 42-8 as head coach at Notre Dame and 32-9 at Lenoir-Rhyne.

Quarterback Cam Miller is the MVC offensive player of the year, having completed 74.2% of his passes for 2,340 yards and 23 touchdowns, adding 274 yards and three touchdowns in last week’s game, which included only his second interception.

“Their quarterback’s been unbelievable this year,” Jacobs said. “They’re just remarkably consistent in what they do. They’re not rattled. They’ve been in this position more than any other school at our level.”

Eli Mostaert leads the defense with 11.5 tackles for loss and six sacks, ranking second with 49 tackles.

The clarity of the task — another game in a Dakota — is there. The Bears are coming off their worst passing game of the season, and one in which it took a half to get going up front in the 17-10 win over Rhode Island.

“I want to see us play a full game,” running back C.J. Miller said. “All together. Offense, defense, special teams. I want to see us do it all together.”

What impresses Jacobs from the video he’s seen?

“All of it, right?” he said with a chuckle. “They do the things well that we want (to). … they’re as physical as any team I’ve seen on film and they do their stuff better than most.

“I’ve hit it on repeat since I’ve been here. You have to run the football, you have to tackle really well when you play these guys. You have to do your job. If you try to do something different … that’s when you get yourself in trouble. We just got to do our jobs, we got to play as hard as we’ve ever played.”