The Wildcat Football team battled Augustana University this past
weekend and won 16-13.

The Wildcats and Vikings started off slow-there was no score until the
second quarter when the Wildcats made two field goals.

“Seven interceptions by the Wildcats defense led the way to a win at
Augustana University on Saturday,” said Head Coach Dan McLaughlin.

Wayne State held its own on defense. The Wildcats ended up with seven interceptions in the game Senior Glenn Harris had three interceptions
of his own, and Cole Tirrel picked one off and returned it to the
two-yard line. Randy Bryan had an interception in the third quarter and took it the other way for a pick-six.

With the score 13-0 heading into the fourth, the Wildcats looked to
lock things up and secure their third win of the year.

With about 12 minutes left in the fourth quarter, Ethan Knudson
kicked a field goal from 22 yards out and made it 16-0. This gave WSC a comfortable lead in the fourth quarter. The Vikings were held scoreless through the first three quarters of the game until they finally put up points in the fourth. Augustana made a couple plays to try to inch back into the game with a 15-yard touchdown pass and another 13-yard touchdown pass later on in the quarter which made the score 16-13.

WSC had a couple of opportunities to jump out even more in the game.

“We need to continue to work on our red-zone offense,” said McLaughlin. “We have been stymied the past couple games when we get into the red zone, coming up with only field goals, or nothing at all, when we need to score touchdowns. We will continue to work in those areas to get better.”

Sophomore wide receiver Willie Walton had three catches for 62 yards. A number of players sat out last weekend’s game.

“I think our biggest challenge going into the game was all the injuries we had coming into this game. A lot of our players were banged up from our last game versus Minnesota Duluth. We were really hoping a lot of our players would be good to go for the game,” said Walton.

Heading out of the half, McLaughlin told the team to keep fighting and
make sure to close out the game against a very strong opponent.

“Coach just told us we need to stay focused because we were up last week at half but sadly we couldn’t finish that game off how we wanted to. He just basically said let’s finish this game off focused and we would win the game. I think that helped us win that game,” said
Walton.

The next game is this weekend at home against Southwest Minnesota
State. This game is on homecoming, so come out and support the
Wildcats.