ST. PAUL, Minn. - This Saturday at 1:30 p.m., Concordia-St. Paul and Minot State will kickoff from Herb Parker Stadium in Minot, N.D. as each team seeks its first win of the year in week three of the NSIC football season.

SERIES HISTORY
Concordia is 4-1 against Minot State in a series that started in 2008 at Griffin Stadium with a 55-7 Golden Bear win. The game opened a home/home series that lasted four seasons in non-conference play before the teams first met in NSIC action in 2013, a 29-0 season opening Concordia win at Sea Foam Stadium. Concordia dropped the 2009 return trip to Minot State 24-21, the program's first-ever trip to the town located in Northwestern North Dakota but has picked up wins in all four contests since including a 43-31 road win in 2011 to level the series at Herb Parker Stadium at 1-1 where it stands today.

AGAINST THE NORTH DIVISION
Saturday's game is the third of four contests to start the year against the opposite division in the NSIC's divisional format. Since moving to division play in 2012, Concordia is 5-9 against the NSIC North and 8-11 against teams currently in the NSIC North under fifth year head coach Ryan Williams. In the last two years, Concordia is 1-5 against the NSIC North, a trend the team will look to flip this Saturday. Of those five losses, three were by a touchdown with another decided by two points.

NOTES ON THE 2015 SCHEDULE
The Golden Bears look to play a six game home schedule for the first time since the 2010 Mineral Water Bowl season and just the second time since Sea Foam Stadium opened in 2009.

The team will welcome a pair of opponents who have never played at Sea Foam Stadium, MSU Moorhead in week two and Southwest Minnesota State in week 10. Additionally, Sioux Falls (week nine) has only played at Sea Foam Stadium once (2013), while Bemidji State (week four) and Winona State (week five) have not appeared at Sea Foam Stadium since the 2010 Mineral Water Bowl season.

Away from home, Concordia heads to Minot State and St. Cloud State for the first time since 2011 while the three away South Division opponents: Upper Iowa, Wayne State and Augustana were all on the away schedule in 2013.

MEET THE 2015 CAPTAINS
Concordia head coach Ryan Williams has announced four captains for the 2015 season, seniors Cole Parker (LT, Brookfield, Wis.), Hank Goff (DL, Minnetonka, Minn.) and Jordan Nieuwsma (FS, Lakeville, Minn.) will head out to conduct the coin toss while the fourth opening day captain, junior Corey Cole (QB, Fillmore, Calif.) has been removed from the team's two deep due to injury.

LAST MEETING (9/7/13): Concordia 29, Minot State 0
The Golden Bears put up their first shutout since the 2007 season finale (48-0 vs Minn. Crookston) to open the 2013 campaign at Sea Foam Stadium. The defense racked up four sacks led by Nick Jauch with 1.5 followed by Zach Moore and Chris Sesson with one each. The Golden Bears held Minot State to 11 first downs and 191 yards of total offense, including 1-13 on third downs.

Offensively, Concordia quarterback Jared Russo completed 14-22 for 223 yards and three long touchdowns (46, 66, 26) but the Golden Bears opened the scoring on the ground with Tre Spears bowling through the Minot State front for a 1-yard touchdown. Spears rushed for 123 yards on 22 carries in the game.

All three phases of the game clicked early and set the tone for the game, as the opening kickoff pinned Minot on its own 18 yard line followed by a 3-and-out by the defense. Concordia's punt return team gave the offense the ball on its own 47 yard line for a 53-yard scoring drive and an 8-0 start after a successful two-point conversion.

Gabe Boyce was the team's receiving leader with four catches for 75 yards and a 46-yard touchdown while Ronald Zollicoffer added eight carries for 56 yards and two catches for 27 yards including a 26-yard TD catch. Cordell Smith had Russo's third TD grab, a 66-yarder on his only catch of the day.

Jordan Nieuwsma led the team in tackles with seven while Josh Trifunov added six with three others making four stops each.

Zac Cunha, then a sophomore, was under center for Minot State and he was under pressure, completing 16-32 for 137 yards and a long of 15 with four sacks. The run game wasn't much more effective as Jarvis Mustipher led the Beavers with 33 yards on six attempts.

LAST WEEK: Concordia 28, MSU Moorhead 30
It took a miracle for the visiting Dragons to leave their first trip to Sea Foam Stadium with a win as Jake Hodge completed a 15-yard pass deflected in the end zone to Cory Ambrose with no time remaining to complete a six play, 94 yard drive in 28 seconds.

The touchdown gave MSUM a 30-28 win over Concordia to move the Dragons to 2-0 and the Golden Bears to 0-2. Concordia sophomore quarterback Ben Schramski had put Concordia ahead 28-24 with 1:31 to play with an 11-yard touchdown to Vantwon Melton.

The defense followed by forcing Hodge to fumble near midfield, as Chazz Roberts made the hit past the line of scrimmage as Hodge attempted to scramble with CSP redshirt freshman Jackson Dobbs recovering with 49 seconds to play.

After a 3-and-out by MSUM followed by their three timeouts forced Concordia to punt with 34 seconds to play, Concordia sophomore punter Sam Maedke delivered a perfectly placed 34 yard punt to the MSUM six yard line which was fair caught by Preston Prince with 28 seconds to play, setting up the improbable game winning drive.

On MSUM's game winning drive, Hodge connected to Damon Gibson for a 39-yard pass down the right sideline to move the ball to the Dragon 45 yard line and found Gibson again on the left sideline two plays (one spike) later for 40 yards to teh CSP 15 yard line with MSUM spiking the ball with three seconds left. The game winning TD from Hodge was delivered high to Gibson, who alertly tipped the ball to the back right corner of the end zone where Ambrose was sprinting to make the grab in traffic, just keeping his feet in bounds.

Schramski was fantastic for Concordia, completing 14-29 for 264 yards and two touchdowns (69, 11) while rushing 15 times for a team-high 55 yards and a score. He didn't turn the ball over and was only sacked once in the game.

He connected with Sammy Baucham for a 69-yard touchdown early in the fourth quarter to give Concordia its first lead, 21-17 on the longest play of either players' career. His top target was Jason Oney with four receptions for 47 yards while Alquawn Vickers led the team in receiving yards with 66 on three catches. Tight end Anton Bedeaux also had three catches going for 32 yards.

Junior running back Darius Chapes added 86 yards from scrimmage, rushing 16 times for 52 yards including a long of 34 while adding one catch for 34 yards on a screen pass.

Vickers was excellent all-around with 206 all-purpose yards including long plays via the pass (36), kick return (41) and punt return (23).

Also excelling on special teams was Maedke, as the sophomore first year punter pinned five of his seven kicks inside the 20 yard line with a 34.1 yard average on the day.

Jake Hodge completed 22-39 for 330 yards and two touchdowns while Zayne Medhaug had 100 rushing yards and a pair of scores among his 16 attempts. Gibson had four catches for 137 yards including 2-79 on the final drive and Adam Jiskra had seven catches for 75 yards and a touchdown.

SCOUTING THE BEAVERS
The Minot State Beavers enter into the weekend with a record of 0-2 as they lost a heartbreaker 21-20 at home to Southwest Minnesota State in the opener and fell 38-7 to Winona State on the road in week two.
 
After senior quarterback Zac Cunha went down with an injury in the first quarter of the opener, junior Lucas Romanski took over the reins of the offense. In his nearly two games of work, Romanski has amassed 324 passing yards while throwing two touchdowns and rushing for another to go along with four interceptions. Senior Porter Sturm has been the go-to target for the Beavers as he leads the team with 188 yards receiving and two touchdowns while matching Akkil Walker for the team lead with eight catches. The running game is led by junior Jarvis Mustipher as he has rushed for 153 yards on 38 carries while finding the end zone once.
 
Turnovers have plagued the Beavers through the first two games of the season as Minot has turned the ball over six times so far this season. In the opener, a late interception led to the game-winning drive for Southwest Minnesota State while five turnovers against Winona State caused the Minot State offense to stall out.
 
The Minot State defense has had a tough time slowing down both the run and pass games of their opponents through the first two games as they have allowed 414.5 yards per game with 158.0 coming on the ground and 256.5 coming in the air. While the offense has turned it over six times, the defense has collected a pair of interceptions and forced two fumbles (one lost) as a unit on the young season. The duo of Trevin Swensen and Isaiah Steinwald have paced the defensive unit with 19 tackles apiece while Swensen has chipped in 2.5 tackles for loss and Steinwald has picked off a pass as well.

RECORD WATCH: Halverson climbing in tackles
Senior inside linebacker Jordan Halverson is the program's fifth player to reach 300-plus career tackles, surpassing the milestone in week one at St. Cloud State in a 12-tackle performance. With 19 tackles in 2015, Halverson has 316 for his career and is 27 shy of eclipsing Brian Doyle's (2001-04) program record of 342. He's three tackles away from fourth on the career list (Al Quaye, 319, 2008-11), four away from third place (Matt Woodford, 320, 1996-99) and 11 away from second place (Stan Tischer, 327, 1978-79). Halverson also has 30.0 tackles for loss, ranking 10th in program history.

RECORD WATCH: Mireri holds pass breakup and passes defended career records
Senior cornerback Jimmy Mireri holds the Concordia career records for most passes defended with 36 (32 PBU, 4 INT) and pass breakups (32). He had seven breakups as a freshman in 2012, 13 in 2013 and 11 in 2014 while adding his first interception in 2013 and three more in 2014. He has back-to-back 63-tackle campaigns under his belt. This year, Mireri has four tackles and one breakup in two games.

SCHRAMSKI'S STREAK
Sophomore quarterback Ben Schramski holds a 4-2 career record as a starting quarterback, seeing his four game winning streak come to a close last week on MSUM's miracle drive. Schramski did his part, failing to commit a turnover while throwing for two and rushing for one score in the game as he set career highs in passing  yards (264) and total offense (319) with the three combined and two passing touchdowns matching career-highs. He started his first game in 2014 in week seven at eventual Division II runner-up Minnesota State before leading the team to wins in CSP's last four contests.