BROOKINGS – Coming off of its first loss of the season, the South Dakota State football team will host Western Illinois in its home opener Saturday.

“We’re really excited [to play at home],” said SDSU head coach John Stiegelmeier. “I’ve been asked a million times about playing football at this time of year and I think we’ve settled in on, this is football season, so it doesn’t matter what time of year or where it’s at. But excited to be home after being on the road for a couple games and excited about the weather we’re going to have. Hopefully the fans show up and have an impact.”

The No. 8 Jackrabbits (1-1) are coming off of a 28-17 loss against North Dakota. The Fighting Hawks, who were ranked 14th at the time, are now No. 4.

SDSU held a 14-7 halftime lead, but its offense went flat in the second half. The Jacks had 405 total yards of offense, but had only 60 yards in the fourth quarter. 

“We’ve talked about the [halftime] adjustments we make. Are they worthy of the pressure on the players, to put something else in their mind and then to be able to recognize any adjustments the opponent makes and then react to that. That’s probably where we’ve, not fallen short, but not where we’ve needed to be. … There’s just too many errors and then there were some unique calls in that game. Very unique calls that I’m asking for an explanation for from our commissioner,” Stiegelmeier said.

True freshman quarterback Mark Gronowski made his second start of his career against UND. He was 16-for-32 with 309 yards, two touchdowns and two interceptions. He also had a fumble for the second-straight game.

“I thought [Gronowski] played better in the UNI game than the UND game. I’m not sure why I feel that. I know he threw a lot of deep balls in the UND game and he completed a bunch and had a bunch of yards and that’s a difficult ball to complete. He has to take care of the ball. You can’t get sacked and fumble the ball and we have to do a better job of blocking. I thought he did OK, but I know he’s a lot harder on himself than I am. He’ll be back,” Stiegelmeier said.

Jaxon Janke caught seven passes for 161 yards and two touchdowns against the Fighting Hawks. Jadon Janke had 109 yards on five catches. Pierre Strong Jr. ran for 95 yards on 17 carries.

Western Illinois played its first game of the season last week and suffered a 30-24 loss against Missouri State. The Leathernecks led 24-20 with eight minutes remaining, but then gave up 10 unanswered points to end the game.

WIU had 329 total yards of offense, but gave up 433 yards. The Bears ran for 155 yards against the Leathernecks. 

Quarterback Connor Sampson was 34-for-46 with 281 yards, a touchdown and two interceptions. Dennis Houston caught nine passes for 71 yards and a touchdown. Tony Tate had six catches for 69 yards. SDSU has given up 577 total yards in its two games.

This is the first matchup between SDSU and WIU since 2017. The Jacks have won nine of the past 10 meetings against the Leathernecks. Stiegelmeier said preparing for WIU is going to be difficult because there is not much film on them.

“[WIU] is an improved football team. It’s a little hard to get a scouting report on their defense because they have a new coordinator. So none of the old film is worth anything and we only have one game on them. I can’t remember even being in high school, when I was a high school coach, only having one game on a team. You usually have last year’s film or three or four games from the season. So that’s been unique for our offense. We have to prepare for a lot of different things for all their three phases,” Stiegelmeier said.

Kickoff between SDSU and WIU is set for 2 p.m. Saturday. You can watch the game on MidcoSN2 or ESPN+.