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Northern Arizona’s football season will continue Saturday in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) playoffs when the Lumberjacks play at No. 15 Abilene Christian in Texas at 1 p.m. MST.
First-year head coach Brian Wright’s NAU team earned an at-large berth, NAU’s first playoff appearance since 2017. The Lumberjacks finished this season 8-4 with a 6-2 record in Big Sky Conference play and won five straight games to end the regular season for their longest winning streak since 2017.
The winner of NAU-Abilene Christian will go on to face No. 2 North Dakota State in Fargo, N.D. on Dec. 7.
“I’m extremely excited, of course, to see our team’s hard work pay off,” Wright said via NAU’s athletics website. “I’m so proud of our seniors and our veteran players that last December when this new staff showed up, decided to stay here and be committed to what our direction was going to be.
“I’m certainly excited for our players, our staff, and our community to have something to continue to play for.”
The Lumberjacks finished undefeated at home for just the third time in program history at 5-0. Their four losses came on the road to then-FBS No. 20 Arizona and three FCS Top 25 teams, including Idaho and Montana.
Northern Arizona joins four other Big Sky Conference teams, No. 1 Montana State, No. 5 UC-Davis, No. 8 Idaho and No. 14 Montana in the FCS playoffs. It’s the sixth FCS playoff appearance for the Lumberjacks in program history, who are 1-5 in the postseason. Abilene Christian also finished the regular season 8-4 and 7-1 in the United Athletic Conference, which it won. NAU and Abilene Christian have met three times overall, and NAU has won all three matchups.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: NAU makes FCS playoffs for first time since 2017
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/northern-arizona-lumberjacks-fcs-postseason-003144411.html
Author : AZCentral | The Arizona Republic
Publish date : 2024-11-25 00:31:00
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