NDSU, UND Used Bye Week to Prepare for Their Match-Up

NDSU, UND ready to meet for fourth time as division opponents

FARGO, N.D. — Its the week many football fans in the peace garden state look forward to now that both division one programs are members of the same conference. North Dakota and North Dakota State matching up and doing so with extra prep time coming off byes.

For NDSU, it was time well spent taking some time off while still getting some work in on the field with four practices.

Saturday’s tilt may be marked as an away game on the schedule, however the Bison are traveling just 80 miles north and the plan is to treat this week like they’re going to play at home by leaving the morning of.

“It’s beneficial to have it after a decent population of where you’re at. What your depth looks like,” Entz said. “Hopefully you’ve been able to hold off any injuries but you are now going into eight straight weeks. I do think the timing worked out well for us. Anytime you can have a bye week late September early October would probably be the max otherwise you want to get in a routine and get going. That’s always your concern is breaking that routine and now you have to get back into it but I think we have a veteran enough group that we should be ok.”

Some bad news on the defensive side lineman Spencer Waege is out for the season after a torn ACL against Towson.

For UND,  it’ll be the first time hosting this game since 2003 when both schools were division two programs.

Heading into the match-up, the Fighting Hawks own a 12-game home win streak, however in the previous three meetings since have come out on the losing end most recently in March being held to just 13 points.

Having the extra week of prep along with the experience of playing the Bison with much of the same roster last spring, head coach Bubba Schweigert says it can only help come gameday.

“If you need to limit some reps on some guys who are banged up, you can afford to do that. Just getting the younger guys more reps too,” Schweigert said. “Getting them ready for the next game. That’s what we use the week for and I guess we’ll find out how beneficial it was to us at the end of the game Saturday. We tried to get our football team better. That was a big focus. We can keep improving our team each and every day and each and every week.”

UND is ranked 10th in the latest stats fcs poll with the series lead while NDSU is fifth.