VCSU’s Eric Burgad drives Jamestown’s Tyler Spanton (20) to the ground with help from Bernardo Marte. The Vikings expect another physical game this weekend when the Dickinson State Blue Hawks visit Lokken Field for the VCSU homecoming game, Saturday at 1:30 p.m. (Mark Potts/VCTR) 

By Mark Potts
Valley City Times-Record

The term “must-win game” is overused, but for the Viking football team, this week is about as close as they’ll get to a true must-win game this early in the season.
Off to an 0-1 start in the DAC, a loss this week would drop the Vikings to 0-2 and two games back, an almost insurmountable deficit with five games to play.
“If we’re gonna have a chance at a conference championship we gotta win,” said Vikings head coach Dennis McCulloch. “Every game is important to it now, we put ourselves in that spot so we don’t have a loss to give for a realistic shot at a conference championship.”
After an impressive 2-0 start, the Vikings have dropped two close games in a row and a loss this week could very well be the turning point in the season. Three losses in a row and damaged confidence going into next week’s matchup at Black Hills State – maybe the best team in the DAC – could be a recipe for disaster, making this week’s homecoming game the most important of the young season.
“They won’t get any easier,” McCulloch said of their remaining games. “I don’t look at any of the games on our schedule and say, ‘Oh, there’s an easy one.’ We have a really tough schedule ahead of us. If we win a conference championship this year it will be a well-deserved one.”
The Vikings will try to restart their drive to the championship this week against the Dickinson State Blue Hawks. The two teams have been very evenly matched over the years with the all-time series at 29-29-5. The Vikings won a 17-13 battle last year but Dickinson had won the five previous meetings.
In recent history the defense has been the anchor for Dickinson State. This year, not so much. The Blue Hawks rank fifth in the DAC in total defense and seventh in points allowed, but they held Minot to 28 points and Jamestown to 21 in the last two weeks.
“They really did a good job against what I would look at as two very good offenses (Minot/Jamestown),” McCulloch said about the Blue Hawk defense. “So they still have enough talent to shut people down and slow people down.”
Last year the Blue Hawks only allowed eight passing touchdowns all year while VCSU’s Jason Beilke has already thrown for 13 touchdowns this year. How well Dickinson handles Beilke, and receivers Chauncey Calhoun and Dan Hill, will most likely determine who wins the game.

For full story, see Friday's edition of the Valley City Times-Record.