UMD women conclude Banner Night with 5-3 narrow escape
It was Banner Night for the UMD women’s hockey team, but hardly a banner night for the Bulldogs, who were pushed to the DECC’s walls — literally and figuratively — by Providence before escaping with a 5-3 victory in their season-opener.
The final result was a lot like a lot of the games in UMD’s first two seasons — a victory. But most of those victories were lopsided in UMD’s favor, while the 5-3 triumph was a nail-biter to the end, when freshman defenseman Larissa Luther lifted a 150-foot shot into an empty net with nine seconds remaining to clinch it.
“I know it’s our first game,” said UMD coach Shannon Miller. “And I’m happy we won. But do you think I’m happy that in our building, on our banner night, our opponent came in here and outworked us?”
Ah, the season-opener, and Shannon Miller was already in midseason rhetorical question form.
It was a night of firsts for the UMD women’s team at the DECC. It was the Bulldogs opening game of the season, and it was the first chance any UMD team has ever had to raise any NCAA tournament championship banner to the rafters. It also gave them the opportunity to put their new-look, but still No. 1 ranked, team on display for the first time.
It was not always a pretty sight, often rough and ragged and chippy, but it was a tremendous game from an entertainment standpoint. That may have been true for 925 fans, and Providence coach Bob Deraney. “I thought it was a great game,” he said. “That’s an exceptional team across the way, and we’re young, with our sophomores and freshmen outnumbering our seniors and juniors. But I couldn’t think of a better place to play.
“I know they’ll turn it up a notch tomorrow, and we’ll find out if we can.”
Miller said her team would raise its level of play in the rematch. “Right now,” she said, “they’re catching their breath from the blast they got from me.”
The Bulldogs started at sort of a mellow pace, but then seemed to take charge, building a 4-1 lead before the second period ended. Maria Rooth started where she left off last season, scoring two goals and assisting on two others, while Hanna Sikio and Erika Holst, the returning second and third scorers behind Rooth, also scored a goal each.
There were 18 penalties called by referee Krista Knight, 10 against UMD, and yet if it weren’t for the penalties, UMD wouldn’t have scored, as the ‘Dogs got four power-play goals and one shorthanded. Goaltender Tuula Puputti made 22 saves, to 21 for her counterpart, Amy Quinlan, and she made a sensational late stop when Ashley Payton broke in alone on the left side, and that save may have decided the outcome.
“I’m a little confused about what a bodycheck is,” said Miller. “I saw some open-ice hits that weren’t called checks, and some collisions that were.”
The frequent penalties prevented any flow from being a factor, and many of the penalties were curious. Several obvious collisions resulted in a penalty, often to a Bulldog, and some apparent knockdown bodychecks went by as incidental contact.
“I thought it was textbook,” said Deraney. “There was some terrific angling, and a lot of getting position on each other. But we can’t put them on the power play. They’re too good.”
Providence took a 1-0 lead at 13:36 of the first when Jenn Butsch scored on a power-play shot from the slot, and two minutes later, the Bulldogs had a 2-skater advantage and took advantage. Holst scored on a rebound from the right side at 15:33, and with the second penalty still in effect, Sikio scored with a rebound in the slot at 16:48.
The Bulldogs were shorthanded for all but 25 seconds of the first 6:22 of the second period, but it didn’t seem to matter. They killed the penaly shortages calmly, and Rooth took off to turn a center-ice cluster into a breakaway for a shorthanded goal at 4:36. Rooth later made the UMD power-play click at 16:14 of the middle period on a wraparound at the left post, to make it 4-1.
But UMD freshman defenseman Julianne Vasichek — “Montana” to her teammates — was whistled for her second of three penalties, and the Friars got a goal from Danielle Culgin on a power-play rebound at 17:23. Vasichek, who is from Great Falls, Mont., played well and her toughness filled a valuable role for the Bulldogs, who were getting smacked around otherwise. Miller wasn’t put off by her penalty hat trick. Far from it. “I told Montana, ‘I got you because you’re a physical player, so let’s go,’ ” said the coach.
The Friars, far more aggressive and forceful going to the net — at both ends — seemed to get inspiration from that goal late in the second period, plus the fact they had outshot UMD 11-5 for the session. It translated into a goal by Hilary Greaves at 2:25 of the third, cutting it to 4-3.
It stayed 4-3 to the finish, with Payton breaking in on the left side, only to find Puputti’s quick reactions unbeatable on the best Providence chance. And then Luther, the forward-defenseman-goaltender for Bloomington Jefferson’s state high school champions last spring, got the puck in the closing seconds, and launched her 150-footer — right into the middle of the open net.
Guyer’s 347 yards, 3TDs send Greenway past Hermantown 41-14
Gino Guyer took off in the second quarter Friday night, hitting the line and spinning to get free from one cluster of tacklers, then twisting free from another group of Hermantown defenders before bursting free and sprinting 60 yards for a Greenway of Coleraine touchdown.
At that moment, the stocky little guy holding the down markers at Corey Veech Field in Hermantown, obviously a Hermantown booster, trudged up the sideline opposite the grandstand, where the visitors bench is located, and said, bitterly: “Take Guyer away, and they don’t have much of a team.”
Yes, and taking Brett Favre away might leave the Green Bay Packers looking a little different, too, and we already know what the Chicago Bulls and Washington Wizards are without Michael Jordan. When it comes to high school football, however, the Greenway Raiders are a solid and talented team without Gino Guyer, but with him, they are ranked No. 3 in the state among Class AAA teams. And that was before the Raiders demolished Hermantown 41-14, running their undefeated season to 4-0 and allowing them to leapfrog the Hawks into the Sea-Range Conference lead at 3-0. Hermantown dropped to 3-1 in the conference and 3-2 overall.
Despite the final margin, and the down-marker’s lack of class, the result was not an indictment of Hermantown’s considerable strength and potential so much as an affirmation of the Raiders skill, even if both of those elements were left obscured in Gino Guyer’s jetstream. Guyer, the amazing tailback in Greenway’s Triple-I offensive formation, ran for three touchdowns, fairly routine for him, and he also gained 347 yards rushing on 21 carries, with a display of unstoppable moves blended seamlessly with explosive power in a performance that was far beyond routine, even for him.
“I think the most I ever had before was 200 yards,” shrugged the always-modest Guyer, who is headed for the University of Minnesota on a hockey scholarship, where Don Lucia has barricaded the Mariucci Arena dressing room against the media but would be better off preventing any invasions by football coach Glen Mason.
“Hermantown is a very good team,” said Guyer. “We knew we had to bring our ‘A’ game, even though we started off a little sluggish.”
If the Raiders were a little sluggish, credit the Hawks; if Guyer had never had more than a few 200-yard days before Friday night, his ‘A’ game was stunningly evident by halftime. At that point, Greenway led only 20-14, but Guyer had 262 yards in 10 carries for a 26.2-yard average. Consider also that his 10 runs included gains of 4, 5, 3 and 5 yards, which accounts for 17 yards on four of the carries, and leaves 245 yards on the other six tries — an average of 41 yards per rush.
Naturally, Hermantown coach Daryl Illikainen knew his Hawks would have their hands full because of haunting memories of the shifty but powerful Guyer from last year. “The biggest problem is you can’t simulate that in practice,” Illikainen said. “We work all week, and if we could practice against what he can do all week, we might be OK. But nobody has anybody who can do what he can do.”
Greenway took the opening kickoff but fumbled the ball to the Hawks, getting it back again at their 14. On first down, the whole earth seemed to rotate to the right, but it was only Greenway’s blocking brigade. Quarterback and cousin Jamie Guyer pitched to Gino Guyer, who appreciated the massive blocking scheme until he turned the corner, then sprinted away into the darkness, 86 yards for a touchdown. Arturo Vidaurreta’s first of five extra point kicks made it 7-0.
Hermantown, which had lost only to a spirited second-half Denfeld comeback in the season-opener, stalked back, with Mike Anderson’s short touchdown run cutting it to 7-6. In the second quarter, Jamie Guyer passed for a 5-yard touchdown to Andy Sertich — the only pass Greenway needed to complete all night — for a 14-6 lead. But again the Hawks responded, with Anderson bursting up the middle for a 41-yard touchdown run on a quick-hitting play executed perfectly by quarterback B.J. Radovich from the Hawks veer. A 2-point conversion pass from Radovich to Thad Epperly tied it 14-14 in the second quarter, which aroused the Hermantown fans and gave the Raiders the misconception they were misfiring.
But the Raider defense adjusted to handle the veer, and Hermantown could find no adjustment to handle Gino Guyer. When he broke off that 60-yard run, it took him about 10 seconds to spin and whirl for the first 10 yards, and less than that to go the rest of the way, shattering the tie for a 20-14 halftime lead and prompting the down-marking official to start muttering to everyone within earshot, even taking to baiting Greenway’s sideline statistician in his misery.
In the second half, fullback Adam Wright, who amassed 85 more yards to prove the Raiders have more than one weapon, scored two touchdowns, on runs of 2 and 3 yards, sandwiched around Gino Guyer’s third touchdown run, from 11 yards out. Almost unnoticed in Greenway’s performance was that Jamie Guyer reinjured his bruised leg in the second quarter, so coach Bob Schwartz shifted wide receiver Andy Sertich to quarterback, and the Raider machine never missed a beat.
“Jamie had a bruised fibula from before, and he got hit in the same place,” said Schwartz. “So we put Andy in there. No problem, he’s a great athlete. Gino? He’s smooth, and he works so hard. He got some great blocking tonight, too. We got a push up front, and then a second wave of blocking from our two lead backs.”
Schwartz said that he’s not yet ready to declare this team the best he’s had in eight years at Greenway. “They’ve got to get to the section final before I’ll even think about that,” he said. But he also had strong praise for Hermantown, and particularly Radovich, the stocky 5-foot-7 sparkplug quarterback, who played both ways all game and may have worn down by taking some sort of hit on every offensive play.
“Hermantown is the best team we’ve played this year, by far,” Schwartz said. “Our game plan was to hit Radovich on every play, whether he had the ball or not. You’ve got to account for him on every play, because he’s so dangerous running that veer.”
Last year, Greenway also whipped Hermantown, 35-7, but the Hawks came back to give the Raiders a major scare at playoff time. “We’ll probably meet again in the playoffs, and we can be a great playoff team,” said Illikainen. “We had some success against them last year in the playoffs. We were leading them 17-13, but they ran back a kickoff for a late touchdown to beat us 19-17.”
And just which Greenway player ran back that kickoff? “Did you have to ask?” said Illikainen.
Freshman Rufledt’s 3 TDs ignite UMD to 51-7 rout of Southwest
UMD’s football machine was sputtering in the first half Saturday afternoon, and Ricky Fritz, the Bulldogs record-setting quarterback, was sputtering right along with it. So when a quick tune-up was required, Dave Rufledt turned out to be the surprising sparkplug, providing three first-half touchdowns to ignite a 51-7 romp over Southwest State.
Rufledt, a freshman from Bloomer, Wis., denied that he did anything special, and attributed all his success to a supercharged offensive line. Rufledt accelerated through the Mustang defense for an opening 31-yard touchdown run, then hit high gear to break a 7-7 tie with a 36-yard scoring run in the second quarter, and put the ‘Dogs into overdrive with a 2-yard run to gain a 21-7 halftime bulge.
Sparked by Rufledt’s scoring, the Bulldogs came out hitting on all cylinders in the second half, when they scored 30 points on four touchdowns and a field goal without any response from the Mustangs. The victory was pivotal to the Bulldogs, who had started off with three impressive victories before being upset 17-13 last Saturday at Minnesota-Crookston. Beating Southwest lifts UMD to 2-1 in Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference play, and levels Southwest State at 2-2.
“We focused on the running game this week,” said Rufledt. “And our offensive line was really sticking them. They were unreal today. I didn’t do anything special. Right away, our line was blowing them off the ball. Anybody else would have been able to do the same thing I did.”
Coach Bob Nielson has a wealth of running backs this year, and he had been substituting them liberally.
“Dave is a guy who ran well enough to make us look at our substitution pattern,” said Nielson. “We have a covey of good backs, and we had been moving them in and out to give them all a chance carrying the ball, but sometimes a running back needs to get into the flow a little better.”
So Rufledt got the chances in the first half, and when it mattered, he came through. UMD had 236 yards of total offense in the first half, and Rufledt ran for 126 of those yards on 15 first-half carries. By comparison, Fritz hit on only 5 of 12 passes for 48 yards, and scrambled for 45 more on the ground. Nielson pretty much gave Rufledt the second half off, calling his number just once more, which produced an 8-yard gain, in the second half, giving him his first collegiate 100-yard day at 133.
Jared Murray, a senior from Hermantown, took over in the second half, and, aided by alertly scooping up a fumbled pitch and racing 75 yards for his second touchdown of the second half, Murray ended up as UMD’s rushing leader for the game with 136 yards on 15 carries, with 126 of them in the second half. Steve Battaglia and Andre Bungum got the other two second-half touchdowns for UMD, and Chad Gerlach connected on a 34-yard field goal to go with six extra points. But when the game stood 7-7 for great stretches of the first half, it didn’t look that easy.
“I don’t know what was going on, but I was in some kind of funk in the first half,” said Fritz, who has spent most of his three years either leading the Bulldogs or having them leaderless on offense. “Dave had a lot of good runs when we needed them, and it’s great to see somebody pick it up for us when we needed it. Whenever you can run the ball like we were able to today, it makes my job easy. Our line played one of their best games ever, with no mistakes.”
Having Rufledt and Murray gain 133 and 136 outdistanced Southwest State, which gained only 83 rushing yards to UMD’s 378, and had only 80 passing yards on Rob Fagnan’s 8-for-17 performance for 52 yards, combined with Tyler Engquist’s 4-for-5 for 28.
But after Rufledt’s first touchdown, just 1:37 into the first quarter, Southwest battled back and gained a 7-7 tie after an impressive march culminated by Fagnan’s 7-yard slant pass to Jon Howard, who caught the ball and lunged to cross the goal line 4:21 into the second quarter. That was when Rufledt — and his offensive line’s generous holes — turned things decisively in UMD’s favor.
Fritz got things clicked back into focus in the second half, following his 5-for-12 first half with a 5-for-6 second half. He wound up with 110 yards through the air, while backup Erik Anderson was 1-for-3 for 15 more yards.
“Ricky was a little shook last week,” said Nielson. “It took him awhile to regain his confidence today, but in the second half, he made some great checks, he ran the offense, and ran the option exceptionally well in the third quarter.”
The Cloquet brother receiving combination of sophomore Tim Battaglia (5 catches) and junior Steve Battaglia (4 catches) accounted for 110 of the 125 aerial yards, with Steve gaining 66 of them, including a 32-yard touchdown grab to open the third quarter.
The brothers even collaborated on a trick play, which was guaranteed to not make them look like hot dogs. Hamburgers, maybe, but not hot dogs. Tim Battaglia came around on a flanker reverse, then threw a perfect pass down the right sideline, but Steve Battaglia was held up by a defender to prevent a sure touchdown. The two laughed and insisted that there was no bickering in the huddle, and that Steve had not held up to make his brother look bad.
Neither was aware that the play came from a regional contest by Burger King restaurants, conducted every week, by which fans can submit play ideas, and Bulldog coach Nielson will integrate one of them into the game plan.
“It’s true,” said Nielson. “People can sign up to send plays in, and that play — Battaglia to Battaglia — was sent in. We refined it just a little to make it fit in with our execution, and if their guy hadn’t grabbed Steve, it might have gone for a touchdown. If we get a touchdown on the play that’s sent in, I think it costs Burger King a lot of hamburgers, or something.”
Next week Moorhead State comes to Griggs Field for homecoming, and the Dragons have no idea that they may have to go to their favorite local fast-food joint to get the full scouting report on the Bulldogs.
UMD women return to rink hoping to build on NCAA championship
The UMD women’s hockey team won the first-ever Women’s-WCHA championship in its first season, and the first-ever NCAA women’s hockey championship in Year 2. That doesn’t leave much room for improvement for Year 3, except, maybe, to win both of those prestigious trophies in one year.
So that’s the objective — unofficially, of course — of this year’s edition of the Bulldogs, who hit the ice at UMD’s ice sheet Monday to start preparation for this season.
Some familiar faces return, which is good news for the Bulldogs, led by All-American Maria Rooth (41 goals, 31 assists, 72 points), Hanne Sikio (34-34–68), and Erika Holst (25-27–52), plus defensemen Navada Russell, Satu Kiipeli and Jessica Smith, and Tuula Puputti in goal.
As coach Shannon Miller ran her troops through some high-tempo drills, she got a chance to see her new flock in full for the first time. Missing is Sanna Peura, a talented forward from Finland who decided she was just too homesick to go away again. But a large crop of newcomers bolsters the 14 returnees, and brings the overall roster into some sort of balance.
Of the 24 players, 11 are from the U.S., including 10 Minnesotans, while there are five Canadians, four from Finland, two from Sweden and one each from Russia and Switzerland.
Puputti is the only senior on the roster, and her hold on the goaltending position is obvious. But Puputti and Sikio will also be taking a month off to join Finland’s Olympic team in February, just as Rooth and Holst will go to Sweden’s team. The replacement force in goal will be Patricia Sautter, Switzerland’s national team goaltender who attended UMD all last season but was never given approval to play by the NCAA clearinghouse, which apparently couldn’t find accreditation for the private school Sautter had attended in Switzerland.
“I’m eligible to play now, except for the first three games of the season, because I had gone to an Olympic qualifying tournament for Switzerland,” Sautter said.
Freshman Maghan Grahn from Roseau is another strong goaltending candidate.
Miller bolstered the Bulldog defense by bringing in Julianne Vasichek from Great Falls, Montana, Larissa Luther from state champion Bloomington Jefferson, Heather Tudahl, who transferred from St. Catherine’s, and Meghan Stotts, a former Duluth Dynamite player who finished her high school career by playing at Hibbing.
Returning forwards like Rooth, Sikio, Holst, Joanne Eustace, Jenny Hempel, Laurie Alexander, Jessi Flink, Michelle McAteer, Shannon Mikel and Tricia Guest will also have some competition for positions. Freshman forwards on the club include Julie Fearing from Hibbing, Leah Kasper from Park Center, Nora Tallus from Finland, where she played on the national junior team, and Kristina Petrovskaia from Moscow, which she left to play for the Assabet Valley women’s team, a powerful national amateur program.
In the program’s first two seasons, Miller has been frustrated by the fact that some of the top Minnesota prospects weren’t interested in considering UMD but were holding out for offers from larger colleges, such as Minnesota, Wisconsin or Ohio State, or one of the more established eastern colleges. But two amazingly successful seasons have helped spread the word about UMD.
Luther, for example, said she was contacted by numerous schools but narrowed her choice to UMD and Providence. “I knew this was a good program with great coaching,” said Luther. “Three of the seniors back at Jefferson are planning to look at UMD, too.”
And Grahn said that while girls hockey is in its fledgling stage in places like Roseau and Warroad, she chose UMD for obvious reasons. “I came for the coaching staff, just from talking to them. I know of the respect they have for their players.”
The UMD women open their season against Providence Oct. 12-13 at the DECC, and will jump into W-WCHA play with a huge series against Minnesota the following weekend, Oct. 20-21, with both games at 2:05 p.m. in the DECC.
Before the season starts, Miller will coach an impressive array of WCHA all-stars against Team USA in games Friday, Oct. 5 at Kohl Center in Madison, and on Saturday, Oct. 6 at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. Puputti, Sikio, Holst and Rooth all are on that select team, along with such standouts at Amber Fryklund of Bemidji State, Ronda Curtin and Laura Slominski of Minnesota, Kendra Antony, Kerry Weiland and Sis Paulsen from Wisconsin.
In all likelihood, that team will give Team USA its toughest competition of the season, except for Team Canada.
Bulldogs 71, Morris 0
The University of Minnesota-Morris brought its football team to Duluth and gave the UMD Bulldogs a game on Monday night. For about one minute.
Then Griggs Field took on a lopsided perspective, and the Bulldogs seemed to be running downhill all night to achieve a record-shattering 71-0 victory over Minnesota-Morris in their Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference football opener. The game originally had been scheduled for last Saturday, but was pushed back because of the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. If the Bulldog routine had been disrupted by the delay, it wasn’t evident.
At precisely the 1-minute mark, UMD was blocking a Morris punt, and Andrew Bungum grabbed the ball and ran in 28 yards for a touchdown, with only 1:04 elapsed. When UMD’s offense got its turn with the ball, Ricky Fritz waited until his second snap before launching a high pass up the left sideline. Steve Battaglia ran under it for a 36-yard touchdown, making it 15-0, four minutes into the first quarter.
On that play, Fritz broke the school record for career passing yards, giving 2,872 fans at Griggs Field an indication of what was to come. The Bulldogs set a record for points in a game as well as at halftime, and Chad Gerlach broke a school record with nine extra point kicks, as UMD became 1-0 in league play and 3-0 overall, while Morris is 0-1, 0-3.
The question before the game was whether Fritz, who injured his hip 10 days earlier against South Dakota, would be recovered enough to play, or if freshman Erik Anderson would take the helm. The answer was: Both. And if the Fritz-Anderson tandem wasn’t enough, sophomore Brandon Kolpek from Rochester got in as UMD’s third quarterback, for the fourth quarter.
Fritz got the starting call, and his first pass of the evening was perfectly placed to the junior half of the Battaglia brother act from Cloquet. Fritz, a junior from Eden Prairie, came into the game needing 30 yards to become UMD’s career passing yardage leader. He got 36 yards when Battaglia caught his pass at the goal line, so the record was in hand. Coincidentally, it was Steve Battaglia’s 15th catch of a touchdown pass — also a Bulldog school record.
“It was great to get the record, and especially to get it on a pass to Steve,” said Fritz, who completed 5-of-8 passes for 139 yards before taking his black-and-blue left hip to the sideline for the night.
Fritz finished as he started, with a 35-yard pass to Tim Battaglia, which gave the Bulldogs first and goal at the 1. Dave Rufledt ran it in from there, for his second of three touchdowns of the game, making it 29-0 — still in the first quarter. The Battaglia brothers insist that they don’t keep track of all their catches, but it looked like they were trying to outdo each other this time.
“I think he got more catches than I did tonight,” said Steve Battaglia. “He had four and I had three. He had more yards than I did, too.”
“Yeah,” said Tim Battaglia, “but I can’t get into the end zone.”
Tim’s four catches were worth 123 yards, with a longest of 42 yards, but twice he got into the end zone, only to have the plays was called back. Steve had 64 yards on three catches, two of them for touchdowns.
Meanwhile, Rufledt, a 6-1, 215-pound freshman running back from Bloomer, Wis., ran for touchdowns of 2 and 1 yards in the first quarter, and another from the 1 in the second quarter.
Amazingly, the Bulldogs had half a dozen other touchdowns called back, to say nothing of having a successful onside kick after their opening touchdown also nullified. All those penalties against UMD proved that the officials may have had some compassion, and that coach Bob Nielson will have something to focus on for the rest of the week’s practices, leading up to Saturday night’s game at Minnesota-Crookston.
Morris could never generate anything offensively — gaining only 63 total yards on 50 plays, while UMD had 585 yards on 75 plays. But the Bulldog offense was too much to handle. Anderson, a 6-4, 210-pounder, offered a different look to the Cougars than the 5-10, 195-pound Fritz. Anderson was 5-for-5 for 93 yards and ran twice for 15 more in the second quarter alone, as the Bulldogs followed up their 29-point first quarter with a 28-point second — sending the scoreboard to a surreal-looking 57-0 at halftime. Anderson wound up 8-for-8 for 136 yards for the night.
“Offensively we made some big plays, although obviously, we could do some things better,” said Nielson. “It’s going to be a short week of preparation to get ready for Crookston, and we got some guys hurt a little. But we did a lot of things well, and for MorrisÂ…that’s a tough position to be in.”
UMD’s four second-quarter touchdowns were Kevin Guillory’s 2-yard run, Steve Battaglia’s 6-yard pass from Anderson, Rufledt’s short run, and a 25-yard touchdown return of an interception by Nat Davis. A junior defensive end, Davis had led a pretty thorough charge at Morris quarterback Mack McLarty. Davis leaped to block the pass attempt straight up in the air, then he waited for it to come down to catch it and run it in for the score.
McLarty completed 3 of 19 first-half passes, and had no chance against the smothering UMD defense, finishing 4-for-24 for 53 yards, with two interceptions.
Understandably, the Bulldogs throttled back on the intensity in the second half, with Jared Murray’s 7-yard run midway through the third quarter the only tally of the session. Murray had 131 yards on 22 carries, while Kevin Guillory added 81 yards on 17 rushes, and Ruifledt 63 yards on 10 tries. Kolpek came in with 7 seconds left in the third, and played the fourth quarter, as the Bulldogs turned conservative in order to avoid running up the score.
It became obvious that the only way UMD could add to the 64-0 bulge and challenge the all-time school scoring record would be if somebody could come up with another touchdown on defense. Sure enough, with 5:08 remaining, Langeness intercepted McLarty’s pass at the Morris 30 and maneuvered up the right sideline before diving into the end zone for the touchdown that equaled the school record at 70-0.
Gerlach booted the extra point, breaking the record for total points, and gaining a personal school record with his ninth extra point of the game. He’d have had it sooner, but Langeness had scored off a direct snap for a 2-point conversion on the first
About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
For those who want to keep up with John Gilbert's view of sports, mainly hockey with a Minnesota slant, click on the following:
Click here for sports