Wolford: YSU treating MSU as ‘must-win’ game

October 4, 2014 at 12:07a.m.

Wolford: YSU treating

MSU as ‘must-win’ game

SPRINGFIELD, MO.

Today’s game at Missouri State may be the first conference game, but Youngstown State coach Eric Wolford said the Penguins need to treat it as a “must-win.”

“I think every conference game you’ve got to treat like a must-win situation,” Wolford said. “At the end of year, there’s gonna be a group of teams that are gonna have probably two to three to four losses. It’s gonna be a pretty good-sized group.

“So who’s gonna get the [playoff] nod? That’s why every game is just so vital.”

Question is, how many teams will get a nod?

While the Missouri Valley Football Conference had just two playoff teams last season — the first year for the expanded 24-team postseason — it seems unthinkable that the same thing could happen this year. League members have argued vehemently for more respect in the media (and, by extension, the playoff committee) and they’ve backed up those arguments on the field.

Last weekend, the MVFC finished its non-conference slate with a 23-1 record against the rest of the FCS. The next-best records came from the Big South, which went 15-4, and the Colonial, which went 20-8. According to the USA Today’s Sagarin Ratings, the MVFC isn’t just ranked ahead of the rest of the FCS, it’s ranked ahead of three FBS leagues: the Mid-American Conference, Conference USA and the Sun Belt.

The rest of the country is taking notice, as the 10-team MVFC enters this weekend’s games with eight teams ranked in either the FCS coaches poll or The Sports Network poll, a league record.

“It’s a lot more difficult task to go through this league than it was 20 years ago,” said Missouri State coach Terry Allen, who went 75-26 at Northern Iowa from 1989-1996, winning seven straight league titles from 1990-96. “Back in the ‘90s, our teams, when we’d play up [in the FBS], we would hope to survive. Now we hope to win.”

Three-time defending champion North Dakota State (which is 4-0 with a three-touchdown win over Big 12-member Iowa State) seems poised to again earn the MVFC’s automatic playoff bid. South Dakota State (which is 3-1, with the lone loss against SEC-member Missouri) will probably get one of the at-large bids.

That leaves eight other teams to fight over one or two other at-large spots. Youngstown State plays both NDSU and SDSU on the road in November and while those aren’t surefire losses, the Penguins would rather be in a position where they don’t (literally) have to treat those games as must-wins. That’s what makes games like today so crucial.

“When you want to go where we want to go, every play is vital,” Wolford said. “And that’s something that’s taken us some time to learn and understand, regardless of who we’re playing.”

Wolford is 0-2 against the Bears, although he hasn’t played them since 2011. His first conference loss came at Missouri State in 2010, when the Penguins jumped out to a 17-0 lead in the first quarter before losing 35-25.

This year’s MSU team is probably better than that one, which finished 5-6 (and almost certainly better than the 2-9 team that upset YSU in the 2011 finale) but the Bears were picked to finish seventh in the conference’s preseason poll, so it’s not like they’re unbeatable.

If the Penguins want to make the playoffs, today’s game at least a “should win.”

Is it a “must win”? That’s debatable, even if YSU’s players aren’t saying so.

“It is a must win,” sophomore defensive end Derek Rivers said. “Every game in our conference is a must-win.”