UND football went from its winning efforts on the weekend of the Potato Bowl, to another not-so-celebrated custom.

Last Saturday, the Green and White journeyed to Springfield, Mo. to face the Missouri State Bears and continue to build on the new era of UND football.

This was the third straight weekend North Dakota played a new opponent.

Unfortunately, rather than continuing to build a new legacy, UND reverted to older habits.

The Bears bludgeoned the Green and White black and blue, beating them down 38-0.

UND has had a record of not performing well against the Missouri Valley Football Conference.

Since playing Missouri Valley teams starting in 2008, UND has now gone 3-5 against a conference headlined by in-state rivals NDSU.

All three of UND’s wins against the conference came against South Dakota, but the Cowboys were not in town on Saturday.

“Defensively, we made plays to give us some opportunities,” UND coach Bubba Schweigert said. “But we were not able to convert those into points. We never really had any momentum tonight.”

Even though the final score may not reflect it, UND remained in the game.

In the first half, the team was only down 14-0 after holding Missouri State to no points in the first quarter.

“I was disappointed at halftime because I felt like we missed some opportunities to score and we gave up a score because of a poor decision on special teams, and by not protecting the ball when we were backed up,” Schweigert said. “I felt like we were still in the game, but we just didn’t generate enough on the offensive side.”

The offense continued its disheartening trend of not being able to put up points, even when the defense put it into opportune positions.

A prime example of squandering opportunities was in the second quarter, as Alec Carrothers recovered a fumble to give UND a solid field position on Missouri State’s 44-yard line. The offense stalled in the red-zone and kicker Reid Taubenheim missed the field-goal.

Joe Mollberg had his worst night of the season by far, going 9-for-24 passing with two interceptions and no touchdowns.The running game was not much help either, as the running backs could only muster eighty-four yards on thirty-four attempts  — 2.47 yards per carry.

Luckily for UND, it only has to play one Missouri State Conference team each season.

Next year, the Green and White will renew its heated in-state rivalry and try to rewrite this losing trend with the Bison — but for now, the team has the rest of this season to worry about.

UND will take on the 1-2 Stony Brook Seawolves this Saturday back home in the Alerus Center.

“We’ve just got to keep getting better and better, and go back to work tomorrow and evaluate and move forward.” Schweigert said.

Alex Stadnik is a staff writer for The Dakota Student. He can be reached at [email protected].