YSU tries for a win at UNI-Dome

By Pete Mollica

CEDAR FALLS, Iowa — The Youngstown State football team will be trying to do something today that it hasn’t been able to do in the last eight years — defeat Northern Iowa.

The Penguins (4-4, 2-3 Missouri Valley Football Conference) have lost eight straight to the Panthers (5-3, 3-2) dating to the 2000 season.

Today’s contest at the UNI-Dome will kickoff at 5:05 p.m.

The Penguins have to go back to 1999 to find their last victory at the UNI-Dome, posting a 29-20 win. They followed that up with a 28-24 victory in Youngstown the next season. That was only the second time in the 23-game series between the teams that YSU posted back-to-back wins against the Panthers.

The only other time came in the first two games of the series in 1978-79 when the Penguins posted 31-14 and 29-0 victories. UNI leads the series 17-6, including an 8-3 mark in Cedar Falls.

YSU coach Jon Heacock is 0-8 against the Panthers, while UNI coach Mark Farley is 8-0.

But the last two meetings between the teams have been barn-burners as each was decided by a single point, 14-13 in 2007 and 21-20 last year when the Panthers blocked the potential game-tying extra point in the final four minutes.

UNI’s eight-game winning streak over the Penguins is by no means a record in the conference. That belongs to Western Illinois, which won 18 straight meetings against Southern Illinois from 1984 through 2002. YSU shares the second longest streak in the conference with 13 straight wins over Indiana State.

For the first time since 2005, the league will have a winner-take-all contest when No. 9-ranked South Dakota State plays host to No. 3 Southern Illinois today at 2 p.m. in Brookings, S.D.

The winning team will claim at least a share of the regular-season title and the conference’s automatic bid into the FCS playoffs. The game will be the first meeting in league history between teams with 6-0 records.

The last time the league had a decisive Saturday similar to this was in 2005, when UNI claimed the league’s automatic bid on the final weekend of the regular season with a 25-24 victory against Southern Illinois. That forced a three-way co-championship and UNI won a tiebreaker with the tri-champions (Southern Illinois and YSU).

Elsewhere today in the conference Illinois State (4-4, 3-2) will play host to Western Illinois (1-7, 0-5) in a Family Day encounter at 2:05 p.m. at Normal, Ill.

The Leathernecks have won the last two meetings, including a 48-45 shootout last year. The Redbirds haven’t won at home against Western since 1999.

Missouri State (5-4, 3-3) will entertain Indiana State (1-8, 1-5) in a 2 p.m. kickoff in Springfield. The Bears have won the last two meetings and five of the last six and holds a 15-8 lead in the series.

mollica@vindy.com