Photo by Jake McNeill Marshall’s Mason Eickhoff celebrates a gain on the ground during the Marshall football team’s Class AAAA quarterfinal win over Byron at East Ridge High School in Woodbury on Nov. 7.

MINNEAPOLIS — It’s been eight years since the Marshall football team was last in the state semifinals before today. While the Tigers making it this far is an accomplishment in and of itself, they have their sights set on bigger goals: taking down undefeated No. 1 Becker to advance to the state championship game for the first time in program history.

“It’s exciting obviously, but we’re going one at a time and Becker’s up next,” Marshall head coach Terry Bahlmann said regarding being on the brink of a historic moment for the program. “Byron was a fun win last week and Becker’s this week, and we get to play inside where it’s nice and warm, so it’s a great opportunity for our football team and our community.”

Heading into today’s Class AAAA semifinal match, Marshall sits at 10-1 on the year while Becker is a perfect 11-0. The tape also tells similar tales in terms of results for both teams; Marshall has averaged 36.8 points per game with a plus-30.4 scoring margin, while Becker has averaged 37.6 points per game with a plus-30.6 scoring margin. 

While the teams have had similar results, Becker has had a notably challenging path. They’ve already claimed victories over four of the top 10 teams in the final AP poll; they defeated No. 8 Hill-Murray 51-0, No. 6 Providence Academy 13-9, No. 5 ROCORI 30-14, and No. 3 Princeton 28-7. The week 2 loss to Providence Academy was their only game all season decided by fewer than two touchdowns.

Marshall has dominated the competition they’ve had but hasn’t been tested as often as the Bulldogs. The Tigers’ 21-0 win over No. 4 Byron in the Class AAAA quarterfinals was their only matchup against a ranked Class 4A team, and they split their matchups against ranked 3A competition with a 20-14 loss to No. 4 Waseca and a 28-9 win over No. 8 Fairmont.

In terms of common opponents, the Tigers and Bulldogs have both played Willmar and Hutchinson this season. Marshall defeated Willmar 33-7 and Hutchinson 35-13 in the Section 2AAAA championship, while Hutchinson defeated Willmar 42-7 and Hutchinson 49-6.

While the Tigers are on the brink of uncharted territory, the Bulldogs are on familiar ground. While the Bulldogs’ last state tournament appearance before this year was in 2021, culminating in a 24-20 4A semifinal loss to Kasson-Mantorville, they’ve been to the state tournament plenty under head coach Dwight Lundeen. 

In his 55th season as head coach, Lundeen has led the Bulldogs to the state tournament 17 times since 1985 and to the Prep Bowl eight times. Six of those eight appearances have come since 2000 and two of those appearances — 2005, 2014 and 2015 — resulted in state championships.

“I have a very experienced staff, and that helps. Not only my experience, but my offensive coordinator [Mike Lundeen] and defensive coordinator [Hokan Bengtson] have been with me for many, many years and I think we bring a calming effect,” Dwight Lundeen said. “It’s exciting, but still you have to play football and trust your preparation. Don’t get overly emotional and excited about it, just execute your Xs and Os and enjoy the experience.”

Marshall, meanwhile, is making their fifth overall appearance and fourth under Bahlmann, with each of his first three appearances coming in consecutive seasons from 2015 through 2017. While history is on the Bulldogs’ side, the Tigers aren’t standing down.

“It’s not intimidating for us, we’ll be ready for it,” Bahlmann said. “When you watch them on film, that team’s speed jumps out at you and their skill kids have done a great job. They like to take shots for big plays, so we want to make them drive the field and, like always, put pressure on the quarterback.”

The Tigers’ ability to put pressure on opposing quarterbacks and stuff opposing running backs has been key to the team’s success all season long. JR Vierstraete, Gavin Schaefer, Josh Kraft and Jack Meier combined for 19 regular-season sacks and each came up with several tackles in the backfield in last week’s quarterfinal win over Byron. As such, teams need to be innovative with their play design to limit the Marshall’s line’s ability to break the game open.

Becker has a unique enough offense to give Marshall some problems. For one, Lundeen said he expects to play 40 different players in the first quarter alone due to his team’s depth. He added that he feels like the players’ individual stats tend to be slightly deflated because they mix in so many players, but that the team’s rotation on the field combined with mostly non-contact practices help keep the team fresh and healthy.

While most teams remain consistent at quarterback, the Bulldogs have even split reps there between Sawyer Brown and Tristan Kowalkowski, with Kowalkowski tossing up 70 attempts to Brown’s 59 on the season.

“We’re blessed with great quarterbacks. I’m the quarterback coach, so I spend a lot of time working with and developing that position, and we’re very confident in the two young men that have been dividing time, and we kind of just make it work,” Lundeen said. “Whoever’s maybe been on defense for a while, or had a long run, or a certain set that we’re in, we’ll change quarterbacks randomly because we’ve got a lot of confidence in both of them.”

Kowalkowski is a player who isn’t afraid to sling the rock. While his completion percentage of 58.6% is below that of Brown, he’s aired the ball out for 958 yards and 12 touchdowns with two interceptions. Brown, meanwhile, has contributed another 690 passing yards with eight touchdowns and one interception. Brown has also outpaced Kowalkowski on the ground with 121 yards and three touchdowns on five yards per attempt to Kowalkowski’s 58 yards and two touchdowns on 2.3 yards per carry.

“We just need to identify the quarterback,” Bahlmann said. “One’s more of a runner, the other one’s going to maybe throw it 50 yards in the air, so we need to be ready for both. We’ve prepared for both and hopefully, we can identify it. It’s loud when you play in U.S. Bank, a little harder to hear, so the kids need to get it worked out right away.”

Overall, Becker has a wide array of offensive weapons to get the ball to. Mitchell Soltau and Carter Reckelberg have led the receiving corps with 668 yards and seven touchdowns on 34 catches for Soltau, and another 612 yards and 11 touchdowns on 19 catches for Reckelberg. Brown, Isaac Daluge and Landen Kujawa each have also racked up over 100 receiving yards on the season.

On the ground, Kujawa and Daluge lead the team with 620 yards and 11 touchdowns on 5.9 yards per attempt, and 556 yards and five touchdowns on 8.6 yards per attempt. Yet, the Bulldogs again have plenty of backfield depth; Cody Klatt has also punched in seven rushing touchdowns and a total of six players have racked up over 100 rushing yards on the season for the Bulldogs.

“I’ve been here a long time, we’ve had a lot of success, and I figured out that you can’t be too one-dimensional,” Lundeen said, adding that he tries to split his offense down the middle between runs and passes. “That’s kind of our tradition, we feel like that is a big part of our offense, and whatever they give us, we’ll take. Whether it’s running in the box or throwing the ball, we’re capable of running the ball or throwing the ball any place on the field that we can find a weakness in the defense.”

Becker enters the game with 2,161 rushing yards and 1,763 passing yards. Its run game has also accounted for a slight majority of the team’s touchdowns, rushing for 34 while passing for 22.

Defensively, Becker has limited its opponents to 700 passing yards on 4.6 yards per attempt and 1,014 rushing yards on 3.1 yards per attempt. They’ve also forced 18 turnovers on the season while allowing just nine touchdowns.

Marshall has generally been a run-first team all season long. Its talented offensive line, featuring with Preseason All-State selection Jake Allex, Derek Hisken, Braylon Podratz, Aidan Mattison and Eli Weedman, has consistently created massive holes for reigning District Player of the Year Gavin Schaefer and Mason Eickhoff out of the backfield. 

While some teams may have thought as the run game goes, Marshall goes, the Tigers proved the doubters wrong last week when Meier racked up 127 receiving yards and a touchdown on three catches to lead Marshall to its first state tournament victory since 2016. Wide receivers Josh Kraft and Kieler Rhea also give Becker additional passing weapons to look out for when Levi Maeyaert drops back to pass.

Today’s game at U.S. Bank Stadium is scheduled to start at 10:30 a.m. The winner will take on the winner of No. 1S Totino-Grace and No. 3N Orono in the state championship game on Friday, Nov. 22 at 1 p.m. in The Bank.

“[We’re ready to] just get our there and show off our football team,” Bahlmann said. “We’ve had a good team. There were some years that we got beat by Hutch and Hutch has gone on [to the state championship game], so it’s our turn to be in the final four here. We just want to come out and play well in front of a big crowd.”