PITTSBURG, Kan. – Northeastern State could not recover from a slow start and special teams miscues in the opening quarter and fell 58-3 No. 22 Pittsburg State on Saturday evening.
The RiverHawks (0-3, 0-3 MIAA) went three and out in their opening two drives. On the second punt, Pitt State returned the ball for 58-yards to set up a short five-yard run to go up 14-0. Northeastern State, in their following possession, had a punt blocked and returned for a touchdown.
NSU's lone score came on their longest drive of the evening in the fourth. Quez Allen rushed for 62 yards to get the ball on the PSU 11-yard line to set up a Brady Ellsworth field goal.
On the offensive side, the RiverHawks were limited to 189 yards with 62 of them coming on Allen's run. All three NSU quarterbacks saw the field with Jacob Medrano seeing the majority of the snaps in the middle quarters. The redshirt-freshman with 6-for-11 with 42 passing yards.
Lane Yoder paced the NSU defense with 11 tackles and a sack for a seven-yard loss. J'Quille Washington had nine, and Courtland Clark had an interception in the fourth quarter.
Saturday's win improves the Gorillas record to 3-0 (3-0 MIAA).
Head Coach J.J. Eckert on the slow starts after three games
That's the part that is just driving you crazy, is the importance of starting fast we've had a chance in two games now to go out offensively and move the chains, get the ball downfield, at least be able to flip the field somehow and we've went three-and-out and three-and-out in both games. That's the part to me that that goes back to where you're trying to put people in situations to be able to make plays, obviously we got to figure out the opportunity to make sure we can be positive on first and 10 and get ourselves to a manageable second down and get ourselves maybe into a third-and-short so we have a chance to get a positive first down and not have to punt the football because that's been our Achilles heel.
Eckert on finding a team identity
I think those are some things that you know they played hard as a football team the thing we got to do is we aren't making enough plays to make it a competitive game right now. And so that's got to be something we got to continue to work on we're going to continue to put ourselves in situations. We're going to practice that way we're going to continue to believe that we're going to be successful, and that's all you can continue to do because we got a bunch of young men who want to continue to find a way to win and it's frustrating that we're 0-3 right now and it's not 0-3 by competitive scores, it's by blowouts. And so the more we can continue to find ways to kind of chip away at it and put ourselves in situations I think that's where we're finally going to have a chance to figure out 'hey this is our identity as a football team, this is how we're going to continue to grow, and right now we're having kind of a one-sided situation, we don't have a lot of guys making plays, and that's our job as coaches, to put them in situations to be able to make plays.
Coming Up: Northeastern State returns home to host Missouri Western this Saturday at 2 p.m. for homecoming.
