HAMMOND, La. — Kirby Vorhees scored three times and was part of a South Dakota State rushing attack that racked up 341 yards on the ground in a 41-0 victory over Southeastern Louisiana on Saturday night.

SDSU head coach Jimmy Rogers called the win a total team effort as the offense complimented a dominant effort on special teams and defense.

“The guys played with a ton of energy and were really focused from start to finish,” Rogers said. “I was really happy with whoever came into the game and the level of play didn’t really change at all. So, credit to the whole team. They worked hard this week and I feel like they responded well.”

The Lions took nearly six minutes off the clock on their opening drive, but Dalys Beanum ripped off an 88-yard punt return for a touchdown that gave the Jacks a 7-0 lead with 8:57 left in the first quarter. SDSU’s lead held up going into the second quarter and Vorhees extended their advantage on his first carry of the game, going 20 yards for a touchdown to put the Jacks ahead 14-0 with 9:05 left in the second quarter.

The Lions tried to use another long drive to wear down the SDSU defense but after six minutes, Riley Callaghan’s 49-yard field goal attempt went wide left. Mark Gronowski and Damon Stewart exchanged interceptions on the next two drives before Vorhees took advantage, running through multiple tackles for a 22-yard touchdown that gave SDSU a 20-0 lead at halftime after Hunter Dustman missed the extra point.

“That’s a credit to him,” Rogers said of Vorhees’s second touchdown run. “This is how he runs, really. [He’s] a violent runner and we’ve seen it during fall camp and we talked about him last spring. It’s good for you guys to see now what we’ve been talking about.”

SLU drove into SDSU territory on its first drive after halftime but after Callaghan missed his second field goal of the night from 34 yards, Vorhees visited the end zone again on an 80-yard run that put the Jacks up 27-0 with 8:08 left in the third quarter.

After watching Vorhees run wild, Amar Johnson took his turn, scoring on a 14-yard touchdown run with 53 seconds left in the third quarter to make it a 34-0 game. 

Without Angel Johnson for the second straight game the performance of Vorhees, who ran for 179 yards and three touchdowns on five carries, Amar Johnson, who ran for 65 yards and a touchdown on 11 carries, and Maxwell Woods, who ran for 18 yards on three carries signaled the depth of the Jacks’ running back room.

“It’s going to get deeper,” Rogers said. “Maxwell is coming on and Angel is champing at the bit to get back. So there’s going to be some competition there and that’s a good thing.”

With Chase Mason’s one-yard touchdown sneak with 4:49 to play, the Jacks’ offense provided more than enough for SDSU’s defense, which limited the Lions to 186 yards on 64 plays. 

Even with the Lions holding onto the ball for over 34 minutes, the Jacks flustered Stewart, who threw a pair of interceptions to Steven Arrell and Colby Huerter and held SLU running back Antonio Martin Jr. to 44 yards on 11 caries.

“I thought we had a really good week of practice and I thought our guys did a really good job of communicating out here and just playing the defense together,” Rogers said. “There were some missed tackles early on that we’ll address, but overall, I felt like the guys’ pursuit and consistency throughout the game was there.”

Gronowski completed 7-of-17 passes for 65 yards and added 25 yards on six carries. Mason completed 1-of-2 passes for 11 yards.

Mason ran for 56 yards and a touchdown on seven carries while Brenden Begeman had six yards on two carries.

Amar Johnson was SDSU’s leading receiver with three catches for 37 yards. Grahm Goering had two catches for 23 yards and Kentrell Prejean had two catches for 13 yards. Griffin Wilde had a three-yard reception.

The win was the third straight for the Jackrabbits, who are now 3-1 ahead of next week’s bye. With a week to recover, Rogers expects his team to be ready for its Missouri Valley Football Conference opener at Northern Iowa on Oct. 5 and expects the past few games to have some of his players further down the depth chart to gain some much-needed experience.

“It’s very beneficial. We have many guys that are kind of dinged up right now so to get to that bye week, to get them healthy, as well as continue to improve with some of the youth of our football team, I think these last couple of games were really good,” Rogers said. “They really kind of forced us into playing some guys that may not always get the opportunity for a lot of our players to get an opportunity in a game like this against a very good team.”