Big First Half Leads #2 UMD Over Augustana

Sept 22, 2012

Northland Sports Online

Augustana College may have found a way to keep the University of Minnesota Duluth in check during the second half Saturday night, but it couldn’t find a way to keep the Bulldogs from a Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference victory.

The No. 2-ranked Bulldogs raced to a 35-6 halftime lead and then held on to shade the Vikings 42-34 before a James S. Malosky Stadium crowd of 4,254. UMD, which had outscored its first three 2012 opponents by a combined 79-13 in the final two quarters, moved to 4-0 on the year and increased its NSIC home winning streak to 36 games.

Junior running back Austin Sikorski and junior wide receiver Joe Reichert each had a pair of touchdowns while senior quarterback Chase Vogler completed 17 of 29 passes for 227 yards and two scores in helping propel the Bulldogs past Augustana College (2-2 overall) for the sixth straight time. UMD sophomore Aaron Roth also returned a kickoff 92 yards for a touchdown and sophomore inside linebacker Colby Ring parlayed a second-quarter interception into a 23-yard pick six.

“It was a fun night,” said Ring, who paced the Bulldogs with 11 total tackles, including 1.5 quarterback sacks. “We did a nice job in the first half, but then we kind of let the game get out of our hands after the break. That definitely shouldn’t have been a dogfight at the end.”

UMD never trailed the entire night as it took the opening kick and capped off an 11-play, 78-yard drive with Sikorski’s two-yard run. The Bulldogs were up 21-6 with just over four minutes to go in the second quarter before Reichert and Vogler hooked up on scoring strikes of 39 and 10 yards. Reichert finished with team-leading six receptions for a career-high 96 yards.

“Give Augustana credit, they just came out and made some good adjustments, and we couldn’t match them there for a while,” said Reichert.

The Vikings wound up the night with slight edges statistically in total offense yardage (409 to 404), first downs (26 to 21) and time of possession (30:27 to 29:33) and held the nation’s sixth best rushing offense to a season-low 177 yards (on 37 carries). They also became the first club to extract a turnover against the Bulldogs — a second quarter interception of a Vogler pass.

UMD will play at St. Cloud State University next Saturday night for a key NSIC North Division collision.

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