SPRINGFIELD, Mo — After a week to get rested and polish up a bit, the Missouri State Bears are back at work.
In our Bear Nation Report, it’s another night game at Plaster Stadium on Saturday, with some heightened importance.
The Bears are taking on South Dakota in the Missouri Valley Football Conference opener. MSU has won four straight conference openers.
The last time out, the Bears beat Central Arkansas in a thriller that saw 40 points scored in the fourth quarter.
“Yeah, we want to go out and perform well and play well at home,” Bears head coach Bobby Petrino said. “Get a win at home. We have to build off of last week’s game and make this place a hard place to come in and play. Hopefully we will have a great crowd and make it a home field advantage.”
The Bears moved up one to 18 in the AFCA coaches poll, but moved down one to 18 in the STATS FCS poll after the bye week.
It will be the 8th meeting between the Coyotes and the Bears on the football field. In fact, the two met just six and a half months ago.
“Yeah, that’s the first thing you do is look at what they did a year ago and then take the three games that they played this year, then you take in other situations from the spring games that maybe you didn’t have enough video to analyze,” Petrino said. “But yeah, you jump on it right away. It’ll be a good challenge for us and certainly the conference opener at home, we have to come prepared and go out and execute and play well to end the game.”
Kickoff is scheduled for 7 pm.