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bgdavis -> RE: Minnesota State University, Mankato Mavericks (12/11/2017 9:48:24 AM)
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Commerce won their next round game pretty handily 31-17 over Harding. Next they will be playing West Florida (an unranked 10-3 team) for the whole D2 enchilada, and Commerce should be heavily favored to win. If the Mavs had won last week, I think they would have matched up very well against Harding and won as well, and had a good shot at beating West Florida. I'm rooting for Commerce to win it all, since then it means that the Mavs were potentially just 1 win away from winning it all themselves.
I also saw a post on the D2 forums that Mav's coach Hoffner discussed after the game how poor the Mav's tackling was in the Commerce game. They had 26 missed tackles on defense and another 11 on special teams, including some key misses on the punt return TD that swung the momentum back to Commerce's favor in the 3rd quarter. That number of missed tackles was very uncharacteristic for the team, and the tackling had been very solid during the season the prior 2 playoff games. Part of that is likely due to the Commerce players being better at breaking tackles, but the coach felt that overall the D and ST units just didn't have their usual games. I suppose it could partly be the length of the season finally catching up to them. It's not often that college teams end up playing 14 games in a season (or up to 16 if they reach the title game).
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