A quick and dirty version of the Beavers gameday blog, because I’m tired and have been fighting with our new website for an hour.

EDIT: This was supposed to go up at 10 a.m. Don’t know why it didn’t. Sorry guys.

BEMIDJI STATE at MSU MANKATO

Game Time: 6 p.m. Saturday

Stadium: Blakeslee Stadium (7,000)

Radio: WMIF 92.1 The River    

Television: None on real TV, but you can watch on your computer here.

Twitter: Right here, if you want. I won’t be there, but I will be watching the stream right here in the Pioneer offices. I plan on using Twitter while this football game happens, so follow @JackHitts if you’d like general observations about a game I’m watching on a computer screen.

- As you (hopefully) know by now, Bemidji State beat Upper Iowa by two points last Friday. Upper Iowa scored 16 unanswered points before the Beavers engineered final drive to win with 40 seconds left.

-MSU massacred Minot State last Thursday. The bizarro Beavers scored a touchdown early in the first quarter to take their only lead at 7-3. From there it was all Mavs. MSU held the third MSU to only 32 yards of total offense, including negative 44 yards of rushing. Yes, you read that correctly.

-The Real Beavers (BSU) know the Mavs have a much better defense than the Peacocks and are making adjustments accordingly.

-BSU game notes are available here. Their MSU counterparts can be found right here.

-I know the whole MSU coach child porn thing is still going on, but I’ve mostly avoided that since the original charges were filed because (a) It has really nothing to do with football and (b) nobody wants to talk about it. BSU head coach Jeff Tesch said it wasn’t anything his team has been thinking about and that the Mavs are really good – they’ve had a similar coaching staff for a long time so even though the head coach is gone the rest of the interim guys/coordinators will have them ready to play.

AROUND THE NSIC

Quick previews of the other NSIC games today:

• MSU Moorhead (0-1) at Sioux Falls (1-0), 1 p.m.: Sioux Falls looked like it belonged in D-II  last week against St. Cloud State. Matt Zimmer of the Argus Leader predicts more of the same this week against Moorhead a decidedly weaker program.
• Minot State (0-1) at Wayne State (1-0), 1 p.m.: Another very difficult matchup for the Bizzaro Beavers. Wayne pummeled Moorhead 36-9 last week and it doesn’t look promising for Minot this week either. The Lincoln Journal Star has a nice feature on the Wayne Nate Most, who played 8-man football in high school.
• Concordia-St. Paul (0-1) at Minnesota, Crookston (0-1), 1 p.m.: Lots of snoozers this week. This one so much that I can’t find a preview of this one anywhere. Sorry guys.
• Augustana (1-0) at U-Mary (1-0), 2:30 p.m.: This should be a doozy. U-Mary had exactly one yard last week and was torched for 593 total yards and 30 first downs against Concordia. On the flip side, the Marauders threw for 359 yards and four touchdowns in the win. They have a stud safety in Scott Maldonado who made 19 tackes and had one interception last week. Augie, meanwhile, had no such defensive issues against Northern State and ran for over 200 yards. Zimmer of the Argus Leader is Picking a city of Sioux Falls sweep, although this one should be closer than the USF/Moorhead game.
• Southwest Minnesota State (0-1) at Northern State (0-1), 2:30 p.m.: SMSU hung with Minnesota Duluth before the No. 2 ranked team in the nation scored 20 unanswered points in the second half for the win. Ryan Deal of the Aberdeen American News has a better preview than I could ever write on two teams I’ve never seen.
• St. Cloud State (0-1) at Upper Iowa (0-1), 6 p.m.: Hey, a team I know something about! If you were at last week’s game, or read any of the articles I write (I hope you do, or else I wouldn’t be typing this blog at 1 a.m.) you’ll know that Upper Iowa has a young, talented quarterback who gave the young, talented BSU backfield fits. I’m not sure how he’ll do against a more experiences SCSU squad. Andy Renneke of the St. Cloud Times says that the Huskies defense will have to get better this week to have a chance against the Peacocks.
• Winona State (1-0) at No. 2 Minnesota Duluth (1-0), 6 p.m.: The small-college game of the week, according to both the Star-Tribune and d2football.com columnist Aaron Zimmer. I don’t blame him. These two have combined to win at least a share of the NSIC Championships in 17 of the last 19 seasons. This year the Bulldogs, the No. 2 team in the coaches’ poll, have a new old defensive coordinator in John Steger. His D will have its work cut out for it. The Warriors had a great offense last year, and put up 58 points in last week’s opener against Crookston. Winona Daily News writer Jeff Brown says the Warriors need some swagger to finally topple UMD.