Is Minnesota-Duluth automatic to win the Northern Lights Conference? Maybe … but it depends who you ask.

A couple of teams in the mostly-Minnesota Men’s DII college conference are looking to chase down those Fighting Penguins, and if you ask UMD, as well, they might say things are a little different this year.

“There’s definitely a concern about tougher games ahead,” said Dean Walsh, who took over as Head Coach at UMD this season. “Other teams are getting better. Everyone wants to play their best game against us.”

Like Winona State. Two weekends ago UMD ran out to a 29-0 halftime lead, only to see Winona outscore them 19-7 in the second half. Sure, Duluth won, and sure, Duluth had a few tries called back. But it was a confidence boost for Winona State.

“Duluth has been dominant for a while,” said Winona Coach Jeff Noe. “But we’ve got a good mix on our team. We’ve been a little more committed to fitness and some of the little things that help us compete. We’re not running out of steam at the end of games. And we’re getting more players who have played in high school, and know that to beat a top-ranked team you have to put in the work.”

Captain Taylor Freund, freshman Trevon Pettigrew, and sophomore scrumhalf Nick Zarembinski have all started to show that desire to work hard and learn.

“Nick has started to come into his own,” said Noe. “He is getting better at finding his moments to attack. He’s developing that knowledge.”

Small college teams St. Johns and St. Thomas are playing well, but one more team to watch out for is North Dakota State, which sits 3-1 with North Dakota left on the schedule.

“We’ve been playing well, but we’ve had some mental lapses,” said NDSU Coach Corey Schlack. “We know we have things to work on; we have to clean up our errors. But we are making progress. We’ve made up a lot of ground, and I’m pretty happy with how they’re developing.”

Both Schlack and Noe said teams have to learn not to be intimidated because they play in the same conference as the defending national champs. After all, somebody’s got to beat them some day, right?

For Walsh, he has some championship players such as center Matt Martin and the skilled flyhallf Trace Bolstad, but more than that, he has the right attitude.

“The guys have high expectations of the team and of themselves,” he said. “Against Winona we realized we needed to set up the tempo, and River Falls got the brunt of it.”

(They put up over 90 on UWRF.)  

“We’re still nowhere near where we need to be, and we need the forwards to dominate for the back to do something,” added Walsh. 

The playoffs loom very soon. Winona gets a forfeit this week from Mankato and instead will scrummage with Northern Iowa. NDSU faced North Dakota, and Duluth faces a St. Johns team that backs down from no one. That might be a good thing for the Penguins, and perhaps a good lesson for anyone trying to catch them.