Yotes fall to UNI Panthers

            The 100th Dakota Day hype appeared to be too much for the University of South Dakota football to handle.

            South Dakota came into their homecoming game with high hopes of taking down Northern Iowa for the second year in a row and improve to 3-3 on the year.    Unfortunately, UNI got the best of the Coyotes for the majority of the afternoon, taking down the Coyotes 30-16, dropping the Coyotes to 2-4 (0-2) on the year.

            “They (UNI) are just a good football team. I’m not kidding you,” head coach Joe Glenn said. “I’d be surprised if they don’t go on and have a really good season.”

            One of the headlines heading into the game was the return of quarterback Kevin Earl. Earl had been out since the season-opener against Oregon when he fractured his right thumb.

            “It was awesome to be able to suit up and go out there again,” Earl said. “Especially since it was in front of such a big crowd and since it was such a big game for us. It’s just tough handling a loss right now.”

            Earl ad the offense looked extremely sharp right out of the gates, scoring a touchdown on an 11 play- 76-yard scoring drive.

            “The first drive we overcame penalties and it felt great and we had a lot of confidence at the time,” Earl said. “But after that we were just in bad field position and that’s the way the game kind of went.”

            Like Earl said, it was almost all downhill from there for the Coyotes offense. The Coyotes racked up eight penalties for 75 yards and Earl was sacked seven times.

            “That was the difference,” Glenn said.

            Glenn said the Panthers front seven is as good of a group as they’ve played all year and just overpowered his team.

            “This game was won in the trenches and their front seven was sensational,” Glenn said.

            “Earl finished the game with 260 yards passing and one touchdown. He also threw two interceptions and said he has a lot of room to grown after missing more than a month of the season.

            “I thought I made some nice plays,” Earl said. “I just can’t turn the ball over,”

            The Coyotes are now 2-4, which isn’t where they want to be considering they were 3-3 at this point last year.

            “I don’t worry about being 2-4. I worry about losing to the 10,000 people that were there today,” Glenn said. “It’s so much fun during homecoming and we wanted to win so bad. We had a chance, but it wasn’t meant to be.”

            The Coyotes will look to win their first Missouri Valley game of the year next week when they travel to Missouri to take on Missouri State. The Coyotes beat Missouri State 17-14 last year, which was their first ever win in the conference.