BROOKINGS — We're two rounds into the FCS playoffs, and upsets have been minimal.
Each of the top eight seeds who received first-round byes were victorious in Saturday's second round, so the quarterfinals will pit 1 vs 8, 2 vs 7, 3 vs 6 and 4 vs 5.
That, of course, includes all three Dakota schools out of the Missouri Valley Football Conference, and a handful of other familiar programs.
Top-seeded Montana State had no trouble with Tennessee Martin, winning 49-17 in Bozeman. They'll host 8th-seeded Idaho in the Friday night semifinal, after the Vandals breezed past Lehigh 34-13 at the Kibbie Dome.
The Vandals are the only one of the remaining teams in the bracket that SDSU hasn't faced in recent years, which is sort of ironic since they feel a bit like part of the club with Jason Eck at the helm and fellow former SDSU assistants Dan Jackson and Luke Schleusner on staff.
The second-seeded Bison dug themselves an early hole against Abilene Christian, but once NDSU got that kickoff return touchdown to cut a 17-3 lead to 17-10, that game felt as good as over, and sure enough, the Bison ended up cruising to a 51-31 win. They'll face 7th-seeded Mercer on Saturday, after the Bears beat Rhode Island 17-10.
USD had a little more difficulty with Tarleton State than most expected, but they hung in there and eventually pulled away for a 42-31 win.
That sets the Yotes up with what sure looks like the best of the quarterfinal matchups, against UC-Davis.
Plenty of folks thought the Aggies might be ripe for a second round upset as they hosted 10-3 Illinois State out of the Valley, but Davis beat the Redbirds 42-10.
That's impressive. 10-win Valley teams don't tend to get beat like that, especially outside the Valley.
The Aggies have just two losses this year — to Cal and to No. 1 Montana State 30-28. The Yotes (whose only two losses are to Wisconsin and SDSU in overtime), will have a challenge on their hands in the Dome on Saturday.
The early line has USD as a 5.5 point favorite. Every other quarterfinal host is at least a 12-point favorite.
But as good as the Aggies appear to be, I wouldn't read too much into USD struggling with Tarleton. The Texans ran a gimmicky offense, and as we saw a couple times in SDSU's two national championship runs, grinding out tough wins when not at your absolute best can be a good thing — it often leads to a dominant performance the following week.
Meanwhile SDSU had a stress-free win over Montana in the national championship, setting themselves up with another rematch, this one with Incarnate Word.
The Jacks beat the Cardinals 45-24 back in September, a game in which they didn't pull away until late and had their difficulties with the IWU passing game.
It's rare for a team to play an out-of-conference opponent twice in the same season, and the Word is probably a different team than they were back then. SDSU certainly is.
Quarterfinal schedule
Friday
Idaho at Montana State, 8 p.m., ESPN
Saturday
Incarnate Word at SDSU, 11 a.m., ESPN
Mercer at NDSU, 2:30 p.m., ABC
UC-Davis at USD, 2 p.m., ESPN+
With three of the four Dakota schools in the Valley still alive, the fourth wheel made a major announcement of its own on Sunday, with North Dakota announcing Eric Schmidt as the new coach of the Fighting Hawks. He replaces Bubba Schweigert, who stepped down at the end of UND's 5-7 season.
It's kind of an ironic hire in that Schmidt has been a pupil of Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer, the former USF coach who beat UND while the Cougars were still an NAIA program.
DeBoer was a finalist for the UND job the last time it was open, and UND chose Schweigert. Their fans have never let the school forget about that as DeBoer climbed the coaching ranks, so nabbing his former special teams coach at Fresno State and Washington feels almost like a subtle acknowledgment of that mistake.
Then again, Schmidt is also UND to the core — he was a team captain on the 2001 Division II national championship team and was their defensive coordinator from 2014-2019 before leaving to join DeBoer. He spent the past year as defensive coordinator at San Diego State, and landing an FBS coordinator is a major win for the Hawks.
Danny Freund, the SDSU offensive coordinator who previously was in that role at UND, did not apply for the job.
UND is the second Valley program to hire a new coach since the end of the season. Northern Iowa recently hired Drake head coach Todd Sepsis to replace the retiring Mark Farley.
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