The Falcons football team will take on the South Dakota Coyotes in the team’s home opener on Saturday night, looking for their first win of the season.
Despite South Dakota being a Division II team, the Falcons are treating them the same way in preparation as they would against a regular Division I opponent.
“It’s opportunity number two, and we’ve got to find a way to win,” Falcons head coach Mike Jinks said. “Going through last year’s season serves us well right now. These kids understand that you aren’t guaranteed anything and you’re going to have to go out there and take it and that’s any opponent. We didn’t really blow anybody out last year other than Kent State, so there’s a sense of urgency there to go out there and show our fanbase just how much improvement that we’ve made.”
The team also noted the similar playing style to that of the last Division II team they faced, the North Dakota Fighting Hawks, who the Falcons held on to beat 27-26 to win their first game of the season last year.
“We’re looking for a disciplined football team, really similar to North Dakota,” Jinks said. “This game is going to tell a lot about where we are right now. I think we all see that we have the potential to be better in a lot of areas. We’ve seen that we’re deeper; we’ve played a lot of guys, and it looked like they knew where they were going or moved in the right direction, especially on the defensive end it was starting to pay off.”
The team also feels that they will have to be better on offense and play more to their potential going forward.
“Offensively we’ve got a lot of explosion,” Jinks said. “We’ll have some matchup advantages, but we’ve got to play sound football and we’ve got to make plays because they’re not going to beat themselves.”
Despite falling in the first game of the season last week to the Michigan State Spartans, the team feels that they were able to take away a lot of positive things going into this game.
“We showed what our identity’s going to be. We want to be tough, we want to be physical and we want to be disciplined,” Jinks said. “We only had four penalties for 20 yards, and I can live with that. We didn’t give up the big turnover other than the one lack of judgement late in the game. If we consistently do those things week in and week out, we’re going to win a lot of ball games this year.”
