South Dakota State surges in second half to roll past Southern Illinois

BROOKINGS – It took South Dakota State a little while to get warmed up Saturday in the 106th Hobo Day homecoming football game. That’s nothing new, as the Jackrabbits had lost four of their last six on Hobo Day, even as they’ve been a national contender during that time.

This time, against Southern Illinois, the Jacks made sure to send the Dana J. Dykhouse Stadium crowd of 13,776 to the bars happy.

SDSU scored 19 unanswered second-half points on their way to a 28-10 win over the Salukis, opening Missouri Valley Football Conference play with their fourth consecutive win.

Pierre Strong rushed for 229 yards and freshman quarterback J’Bore Gibbs threw three touchdown passes – two to Jaxon Janke – to lead the Jacks out of a sluggish first half and into a dominant second.

Trailing 10-9 at the half, the Jacks weren’t in trouble, necessarily, but they weren’t sharp, didn’t seem to be playing with a lot of energy on offense, and the fans seemed bored. But if the team’s history of laying an egg on Hobo Day was on the minds of fans, it wasn’t intruding on the psyche of the players and coaches.

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“We have a mature football team,” said coach John Stiegelmeier. “(At halftime) it wasn’t ‘we’ve got this’ or ‘oh no’. My message was to just go out and be yourself. Don’t fret. Don’t stress. There’ll be some adversity. Just be yourself, and they did that. Not because of what I said, but because they know who they are.”

Who they are is a team with a running game capable of dominating, and an emerging passing attack that hopes to play off that. But the Salukis did a good job of containing SDSU in the first half, and with fierce winds blowing, Gibbs had trouble establishing things through the air with his team facing frequent second- and third-and longs.

But Strong would break things open in the third quarter with a 64-yard touchdown run that put SDSU back on top at 15-10, then busted a 48-yard run that set up a 12-yard strike from Gibbs to Janke that made it 21-10.

Stiegelmeier said the Jacks didn’t do a good job blocking SIU’s movement and pressure in the first half, allowing too much backfield penetration to snuff out Strong before he could get loose. That changed in the second half.

“We stayed patient,” Strong said. “We knew everything they were gonna bring as far as blitzes up the middle and all that. We weren’t executing at first, but (offensive coordinator Jason) Eck got after us and we started to get it going.”

Strong had 153 of his 229 yards in the second half, while Gibbs only attempted six passes in the second half, two of which went for touchdown passes. His first scoring strike of the day was a 58-yarder to Cade Johnson, who caught a slant over the middle then outran the Salukis to the end zone after a missed tackle.

When asked what changed with the SDSU offense to lead to the second half explosion, Gibbs said: “Our mindset. The way we thought about executing. The first half some of the things we saw were different than what we’d prepared for in practice. At halftime we adjusted and then we got the job done.”

The Jacks defense, meanwhile, was stout all game long. They held SIU to only 215 yards of offense, including just 108 through the air. They notched five sacks, 10 tackles for loss, picked off one pass and held the Salukis to 1-of-14 conversions on third down, which SIU coach Nick Hill called “embarrassing.”

Logan Backhaus led the way with 11 tackles and a sack, while Levi Brown had seven stops. SIU had only 67 yards of offense and four first downs in the second half.

“We knew they were gonna come in and run the ball and we had a great gameplan set up for it,” said safety Michael Griffin, who had four tackles and returned his first career interception 23 yards. “That forced them to throw, and the wind was blowing. We really focused on staying in our coverages, especially when they scrambled.”

Hill wasn’t surprised at how strong the Jackrabbit defense was, but he still expected better from his offense, even without running back DJ Davis.

“We take a lot of pride in being a good offensive football team,” Hill said. “You have to give them credit, that’s a defense that’s top five in every category, but if we looked at the film and didn’t think we were gonna come here and have some success we’d be lying.”