GRAND FORKS, N.D. — The South Dakota State Jackrabbits broke the game open with a 28-point second quarter and never looked back as they defeated the North Dakota Fighting Hawks 38-7 at the Alerus Center on Saturday afternoon.

The win helped the Jackrabbits improve to 8-2 on the season ahead of next week’s game against Southern Illinois and impressed head coach Jimmy Rogers with the consistency and resilience the Jacks displayed after an early deficit.

“I was proud of the way we played consistently throughout the game,” Rogers said. “There’s some things at the end that we need to clean up, but overall, I felt like we did what we were supposed to do and outside of one play defensively, I thought we executed really well.”

The Jacks started slowly as UND drove into SDSU territory on its opening drive, but couldn’t come away with points after CJ Elrich missed a 35-yard field goal attempt. SDSU went three-and-out on its first offensive possession and a missed tackle allowed Isaiah Smith to run for a 62-yard touchdown that gave the Hawks a 7-0 lead with 8:22 left in the first quarter.

The SDSU offense found its way on the following drive, however, as Mark Gronowski hit Griffin Wilde for a 28-yard pass. The big play set up a 32-yard field goal by Hunter Dustman to cut the lead to 7-3 with 2:29 in the first quarter and the Jacks’ defense followed suit, forcing UND to a three-and-out that set up the offense at midfield.

The floodgates opened from there as a 10-yard run by Amar Johnson and an 11-yard pass by Gronowski to David Alpers set up a 30-yard touchdown run by Angel Johnson on the first play of the second quarter to give SDSU a 10-7 lead.

A sack by Caleb Francl on the following drive led to another UND punt and Angel Johnson got the running game going with 27 yards on the first three plays of SDSU’s following drive. With the safeties keyed on on the run, Gronowski and Wilde connected again on a 25-yard touchdown pass that put the Jacks up 17-7 with 10:35 left in the second quarter.

It was a small sample of what Angel Johnson did for the running game, running on 100 yards and a touchdown on 13 carries.

“He’s explosive,” Rogers said of Angel Johnson. “If he can get a little crevice, he can make something out of nothing,”

Rogers also was complimentary of the other SDSU running backs as Amar Johnson ran 15 times for 74 yards and a touchdown and Kirby Vorhees finished with nine carries for 66 yards. Together, SDSU racked up 264 rushing yards and provided a consistent presence on the ground.

“I’m so proud of [Angel], so proud of Amar. It was good to get Kirby into the swing of things at the end there,” Rogers said. “...I was happy for the running backs and obviously that doesn’t happen without the big guys up front and I felt like for the most part, they did a good job of communicating all day, especially with a lot of different types of blitzes and we prepped them all week for all of those things and they came out and executed.”

The Fighting Hawks began to crumble from there as Gaven Ziebarth’s unnecessary roughness penalty sabotaged another drive. The Jacks took the ball on their own 41 and Angel Johnson once again set up a big play, running for gains of seven and 10 yards before Gronowski’s second touchdown pass of the game, a 39-yard connection to Wilde that gave SDSU a 24-7 advantage with 6:30 left in the second quarter.

Graham Spalding gave SDSU another short field to work with after forcing a Simon Romfo fumble on the following drive and Amar Johnson capped off the big quarter with a six-yard touchdown run that gave the Jacks a 31-7 lead going into halftime.

Gronowski connected with Wilde one more time in the third quarter for a 47-yard touchdown pass that gave them three scores on the game. Gronowski finished the day completing 11-of-19 passes for 193 yards and threw all three of his scoring passes to Wilde, who caught five passes for 140 yards.

“Those guys … they work extremely hard,” Rogers said of Gronowski and Wilde. “They put in extra work when nobody else is watching and it showed up tonight. It was good to see Mark take those shots in the middle of the field because he has all the ability to make all those throws when his feet are underneath him. He keeps getting better and that’s the goal.”

The defense also continued to roll as Tucker Large earned an interception for the second straight game and sparked a run of 38 unanswered points to bring a third straight win back to Brookings.

Matthew Durrance led the Jacks defensively with five total tackles. Caleb Francl had four total tackles and a sack, Colby Huerter had four total tackles with one for loss and Adam Bock had four tackles with a sack.

Reis Kirschenman also had a sack in the win.

Davin Stoffel had two catches for 20 yards. Logan Ogroske had a seven-yard reception and Amar Johnson had a two-yard reception.

Romfo completed 16-of-23 passes for 124 yards with an interception for the Hawks.

Bo Belquist was held to 40 yards on four catches and Quincy Vaughn had four catches for 37 yards.

Smith finished with nine carries for 87 yards and a touchdown.

With the Hawks in the rear-view mirror, the Jacks will host the Salukis with a 2 p.m. kickoff at Dana J. Dykhous Stadium next Saturday.

“We’ve got a tough one next week,” Rogers said. “I don’t care what their record says, the players know who we are playing. They got explosive players. We have got to get ready and regroup. We’ll enjoy this on the bus ride home but we have to get ready to prepare for Southern Illinois.