Underdog SU wants to beat D3 away in the semifinals | sport

One thousand nine hundred and three days.

That’s how much time has passed since North Central (Illinois) lost a football game that wasn’t the Division III championship game.

Susquehanna will try to do what some think is impossible on Saturday when it plays the Cardinals in the national semifinals at Benedetti Wehrli Stadium.

The River Hawks will arrive as 18-point underdogs and will attempt to reach a national title game in any sport for the first time in school history.

“It depends how you look at it, you know,” SU coach Tom Perkovich said. “I don’t need a spread to tell us we’re the underdogs.”

The River Hawks’ task is something they haven’t faced before. SU flew to Minnesota and beat top-seeded Saint John’s 41-38 before returning home last Saturday to beat Bethel, also an underdog, 24-21.

“We’re the new guys on the block,” Perkovich said. “We just have to do what we need to do to win.”

Susquehanna (12-1) will fly to O’Hare International Airport in Chicago after departing Harrisburg on Friday morning. The forecast temperature at game time (3:30 p.m.) Saturday in the Chi-Town suburb of Naperville, Illinois, is 23 degrees.

Aside from everything on the field, beating North Central (13-0) is anything but easy. The Cardinals have the No. 2 offense and No. 8 defense in the country.

“They’re the best blocking team we’ve seen all year – maybe ever here,” Perkovich said of the Cardinals. “They are simply a complete team in all phases.”

SU will be tasked with slowing down another elite quarterback, graduate student signal-caller Luke Lehnen. Last season, he won the Gagliardi Trophy, the most prestigious individual award in Division III football, and led the Cardinals to the Stagg Bowl. In the process, he set a new national record for passing efficiency and led the nation in both completion percentage and touchdown passes.

On Thursday, Lehnen was named offensive player of the year and first-team quarterback on the Associated Press Division III All-America team. Susquehanna did not have an honoree on either the first or second teams.

“(Lehnen’s) ability to be a dual-threat guy, we haven’t really struggled with that type of player at this level,” Perkovich said. “We have to be super disciplined. We were probably okay with the other (quarterbacks) running, but if this guy ran, it could be six (points). He has this speed and volatility.”

As in previous weeks, the River Hawks will try to concentrate on time of possession in order to keep Lehn and Co. off the pitch.

“The best way to beat a really good quarterback is to keep him on the bench,” Perkovich said. “I think we need to do this again.”

The North Central/Susquehanna winner will get a week off before traveling to Houston, Texas, on Jan. 5 to face the winner of Mount Union and Johns Hopkins in the Stagg Bowl.

No one has scored fewer than 20 points past the Cardinals this season, which happens often.

The Cardinals’ only loss a year ago came in the title game against Cortland, a team SU had beaten earlier in the season. North Central won the crown in a perfect 2022 season, went to the title game with a 13-1 loss in 2021 and won the title in 2019. This season, North Central lost a regular-season game at Wheaton before losing in the final won eleven games to finish 14-1.

The program has won at least 10 games every year since 2016 and is 69-3 since the start of the 2019 season.

“All we can ask for is to be able to win in the fourth quarter,” Perkovich said. “They have beaten opponents by more than 20 shots all year long. So if we can get into a game like that, I think it could be good for us.”