Montana State downs North Dakota 29-18

BOZEMAN, Mont. (AP) — Montana State needed a quarter to gets its offense going on Saturday. Five games into the season, North Dakota is still waiting for its offense.

After getting just a field goal in the first quarter, the 17th-ranked Bobcats scored four times in the second and coasted to a 29-18 win over punchless North Dakota in the Big Sky Conference opener for both teams.

The Bobcats (3-2, 1-0) had scored nearly as many points in a 52-51 loss last week to Eastern Washington than UND (2-3, 0-1) has scored all season (57). UND showed some offensive life in the fourth quarter, but eventually dropped its conference opener.

"Our effort had been great," UND coach Bubba Schweigert said. "Our guys play hard, we just have to play smarter to give ourselves a chance. You just have to play smarter football for 60 minutes to give yourself a chance."

Montana State has beaten North Dakota three times in four years by a combined score of 147-48.

"They are very good on defense. We made some mistakes, we could have made a couple more points," Montana State coach Rob Ash said.

MSU quarterback Dakota Prukop was 17-for-24 for 269 yards and a touchdown. Mitchell Herbert caught a TD pass and Shawn Johnson ran for 76 yards and a score. Luke Daly kicked three field goals.

The Bobcats had 329 yards of total offense and gave up 293 yards to a UND team that had not gone over 200 yards in its last three games. Of that total, 213 came in the second half.

"We finally got something going on offense," said UND quarterback Joe Mollberg, who threw for 222 yards and an 8-yard TD to R.J. McGill. "This one's going to bite us for a while. We learned today we can play with these guys."

Luke Daly's 34-yard field goal staked the Bobcats to a 3-0 lead with 6:11 left in the first quarter and opened the floodgates. That was followed by Khari Garcia's 45-yard return of a Mollberg interception at the start of the second quarter and Shawn Johnson's 16-yard run with 10:18 left in the half.

The Bobcats then added a 26-yard TD pass from Prukop to Mitchell Herbert and a 38-yard Daly field goal for a 26-7 halftime lead. Daly also kicked a 32-yarder the fourth quarter.

UND was held to just 80 yards of offense in the first half. Its defense continued to keep pace with its offense in terms of scoring. Linebacker Will Ratelle returned a fumble 21 yards for a TD. The UND defense scored the team's only TD last week on an interception return.

Dev Ferguson had three catches for 80 yards and McGill added 63 yards on seven catches.

Kyle Norberg led the running game with 73 yards on 19 carries.