North Dakota State head coach Tim Polasek couldn’t get his offense to turn the tide of a 13-7 loss against UNLV, even when he went wildly bold.
“We were bleeding a little bit, and the time of possession was starting to get flipped. They were really establishing a run game,” Polasek told reporters afterward. “I thought, ‘OK, if we can’t convert a fourth and 1 here, how good of a message is it to send to the guys that we’re going to convert something harder later?'”
Bison running back Myles Mitchell couldn’t get past the UNLV defensive front on fourth down and a yard to go. Normally a power running team and solid on fourth downs, the Bison couldn’t get the yard, which was the case most of Saturday night.
NDSU went 0-2 on fourth downs and 4-12 on third downs. The running game couldn’t get the yards when needed most.
That included leaving points on the board in the first half from another failed fourth down in lieu of the field goal. Ironically, a field goal at that point might have changed everything for the Bison and the fourth quarter call would have become obsolete.
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Polasek didn’t minimize the fact that the Bison didn’t look like the team that rolled out five consecutive wins to start the program’s first FBS season.
In many ways, the fourth down was a gamble amid the perfect record slipping away in the fourth quarter. NDSU had only one scoring drive and two other drives that ended in field goal range for the whole game.
“I thought it was an opportunity to go for it and I just really appreciate the defense going out there and getting the stop so it ends up not killing you,” Polasek said of Mitchell’s failed fourth down run. “But we’re going to look at all those decisions. It’s maybe not the same success that we had in the first [five] games with our four-down mentality that we have.”
“So we’re going to look at those things and evaluate it,” Polasek said.
Fortunately, NDSU hasn’t been a program to repeat mistakes over the years. The Bison haven’t lost back-to-back games since 2009, and Polasek’s crew will expect a big bounce back against Nevada on Oct. 17.
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NDSU’s aggressiveness may have cost them a win much earlier in the game.
That’s when Bison running back Nyeoti Punni couldn’t get a 1-yard fourth down in the second quarter instead of a short field goal. Polasek said the game had a much different feel and that it made more sense than getting points on the board for the first time.
“Early in the game there, I didn’t know what kind of game it was yet completely. I’ll say that,” Polasek explained. “And then just such a good opportunity with a flipped field already, make them go a long, hard way and try to take advantage of a fourth and 1.”
It didn’t work and the Bison spent most of the first half in a 7-0 hole, and it turned out that quarterback Nathan Hayes’ touchdown pass would be the only scoring for the Bison in Vegas.
NDSU Coach Tim Polasek Sounds Off on Blown Call vs. UNLV