Sports

Raiders run riot against Jacks

By Matthew Semisch

09/16/2014

A visit last Saturday from nationally-ranked Central Lakes (Minn.) provided the Dakota College at Bottineau football team with a chance to see where it stacks up among the nation’s elite junior college programs.

In falling 48-34 to the Raiders, however, DCB found out that it still has plenty of work to do in order to put itself among the type of company that visited Bottineau’s Les Christian Field last weekend.

Speaking after the game, Jacks head coach Tim Pfeifer was less than impressed with his team’s performance in a game that wasn’t nearly as close as the final score suggests.

“I’m disappointed with that performance, and I don’t think we played very well on offense or on defense,” Pfeifer said. “And I think we kind of just got our butts whooped.

“We got a couple touchdowns at the end there but it was kind of meaningless against their second-stringers. (Central Lakes) pretty much controlled the game and kicked our butts.”

The No. 16 Raiders stormed into Bottineau on the back of a pair of wins. The Raiders’ 2-0 start to the 2014 campaign was thanks to victories against Minnesota College Athletic Conference (MCAC) foes Minnesota State-Fergus Falls and then-No. 15 Rochester.

The Raiders’ game against Rochester was a tight 41-37 affair, but although Central Lakes only beat DCB by 14 points, the final score wasn’t indicative of how most of the game went.

The Lumberjacks’ defense held together fairly well during the game’s first half, and as a result DCB only trailed the Raiders by a 14-3 count at halftime.

Turnovers were hurting DCB, though. Starting quarterback Krae Kelso threw the first of his two interceptions on the day in the first half and the Lumberjacks then turned the ball over on downs twice while inside the Central Lakes 30 yard line.

Once the second half started, the Raiders finally truly broke through. Central Lakes controlled the game’s opening half despite only being up by 11 points at the interval, but they really put their stamp on the game in the third quarter by scoring another 24 points to go up 38-3.

DCB made some personnel changes later in the second half, including throwing in third-string freshman quarterback Austin Ruiz. Kelso ended his day 12-for-24 passing for 142 yards through the air while also running the ball 12 times for 11 yards.

Ruiz rushed for three touchdowns in the fourth quarter in a solid effort to try and cut into the deficit on the scoreboard.