NDSU Football Players Holding Themselves Accountable After First Loss

Bison suffered their fourth loss in two seasons

FARGO, N.D — North Dakota State football finds itself in unfamiliar territory once again after coming off a loss. Not only did an eight-game win streak end, it became just the fourth defeat in the last two seasons.
Before that, it was 39 in a row dating back to the 2017 season.

The seniors on this year’s squad have seen the highs of the program, winning two national titles after back-to-to-back undefeated seasons, and the lows, falling in the quarterfinals of the fcs playoffs to Sam Houston last spring.

Now that the first L has been added to the record, one of those veteran players linebacker Jackson Hankey says its all about staying in the right mindset.

“We need to figure out how to make this the last loss of the season. That’s ultimately our goal around here,” Hankey said. “We need to find a way to learn from that in a way that will help us win football games in the future and I’m not sure exactly how that’s going to be yet. We just need to continue to practice hard and work hard. Be focused and to dedicate ourselves to the program and to the team.”

While setting that mindset is still a work in progress the positive is NDSU sits in first place in the Missouri Valley. Hankey says that can’t make them satisfied. This feeling can’t snowball any further.

“One thing were not going to do is panic. We still have a lot of our goals in front of us,” Hankey said. “We feel good about the spot were in and we want to move forward being confident. At the same time we need to take a look at what happened in the game Saturday. Take a look in the mirror. See where we feel short. See what we need to improve on and it probably looks like holding some guys accountable. That’s for certain things throughout the week and in practicing. Things that like. Calling out things when you see them that are different then how we want to operate.”

The Bison are back on the road this week and getting ready for some flurries in the forecast Saturday against Youngstown State.