NDSU Preparing for Physical Contest with UNI

NDSU and UNI renew its rivalry on Saturday.

FARGO, N.D. — When you’re one of the top football teams in the country for more than half a decade, opponents tend to try and give you their best game. It also means you build up a few rivalries along the way.

This weekend, Northern Iowa is in town, which players describe as one of their most physical tests. Bison coach Chris Klieman was formerly at UNI for five years before signing on as the defensive backs coach at NDSU.

With the expected increased in physicality, eyes go to the defense. Code Green did a much better job of tackling last week against Western Illinois than the week before against Youngstown State. Defensive tackle Nate Tanguay says that’s been a point of emphasis.

“Even in Youngstown we didn’t tackle great, and then we said ‘we need to tackle better. We need to tackle better’ and we definitely made everybody thud much more in different situations and we practiced tackling that whole week,” Tanguay said. “That’s going to continue to be an emphasis, because we need to keep being great tacklers and more gang tackling too with everybody vacating to the ball. So yeah, it’s definitely an emphasis.”