NDSU’s Lance Battles Back from Slow Start to Lead Bison to Victory

Lance ran for two and threw two touchdowns

FARGO, N.D. — In front of 26 NFL scouts from 20 NFL teams, North Dakota State Trey Lance showed what he was made of, leading a 4th quarter comeback to lead to Bison to 39-28 victory over Central Arkansas.

It wasn’t pretty to start. Lance fumbled on the first drive leading to UCA field goal. After connecting on the first touchdown to tight end Josh Babicz, the 2019 FCS Player of the Year settled in, finishing with 149 yards in the air and 143 yards on the ground adding four touchdowns. It’s being able to run the ball so effectively that helped him get out of the slow start.

“I know he had a ton of yards rushing today and that’s one of the things he provides,” head coach Matt Entz said. “His legs, he can extend plays. Central Arkansas was playing a ton of back-to-the-wall defense through the course of the game and he made them pay a couple times with his ability to scramble and the ability to operate our offense and run our run game through him from the quarterback position. Knowing him, he’s the upmost competitor. I’m sure he wishes he had a couple throws back but that’s why we’re going to continue to coach him and excited about where he’s going to go from here.”

“I think we just beat ourselves. I missed a lot of opportunities in the first half, I think, personally that slowed us down a lot offensively,” Lance said. “Obviously third downs, we weren’t really efficient but at the end of the day, confidence is just what we bread here so I have complete confidence our guys and myself the whole game.”

It was a goal for the Bears to come in and pick off Lance. It was the first of his career after not throwing any in his redshirt freshman year. I’ll have more on the game and how the Bison were able to pull this one off coming up later in sports.