BIG RAPIDS - It's doubtful anyone had the final numbers as displayed on the scoreboard at Top Taggart Field Saturday night at Ferris State University.
Face it, most people had top-ranked Grand Valley State University enjoying the short trip to Big Rapids and steamrolling Ferris with little difficulty. That, however, was certainly not the case. The Bulldogs battled the Lakers start to finish and forced Grand Valley to escape with a 17-10 win before a crowd of 4,290 in Big Rapids. Those who elected to skip this game, perhaps with the expectation it would end in a blowout win for GVSU, were the ones who lost out on what turned out to be a classic 2009 edition of the Anchor-Bone Classic.
"We took a huge stride from last week (a 43-7 loss at Findlay)," Ferris head coach Jeff Pierce said in the post-game press conference in Wheeler Pavilion after his team fell to 1-3 on the season overall and 0-3 in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. "We didn't play good football last Saturday and I think the kids took it to heart and we embarrassed ourselves. The kids came back and I was proud of the way they battled."
Grand Valley jumped out to the early lead as Laker quarterback Brad Iciek completed a 5-yard touchdown pass to Mike Koster for a 7-0 lead at 4:53 of the first quarter. The Lakers built their lead to 10-0 off a 22-yard field goal from Justin Trumble at 7:22 of the second.
Many were probably thinking the Lakers were off and rolling.
That was not the case as Ferris got a 45-yard field goal from kicker Shawn Snoor at 5:16 of the second quarter to cut the FSU deficit to seven, at 10-3.
Ferris evened the score and brought the crowd at Top Taggart to its feet as Tyler Thomas capped an 80-yard drive with a 2-yard touchdown run to knot the score at 10-10.
The comeback was on, and suddenly pressure was not on GVSU's side of the field.
"We talked about Ferris having a lot of pride," Grand Valley head coach Chuck Martin said. "We knew they were going to bounce back and we didn't care about what happened last week."
Grand Valley, however, showed it is not the top-ranked team in the nation by accident. Martin's Lakers took the lead for good on a 9-yard touchdown pass from Iciek, who completed 16-of-27 passes for 186 yards with the two touchdown strikes.
On the ground, Laker Jimmy Berezik rushed the ball 29 times for 178 yards as GVSU amassed 214 yards on the ground.
For Ferris, D.J. Freeman had 11 carries for 70 yards as he also took some snaps at the quarterback position to give the Lakers a little something extra to think about as that formation gave the Bulldogs a bit of a lift.
"We will continue to do that," Pierce said of playing Freeman at quarterback. "D.J. was a quarterback in high school. When you start running the option ... our other quarterbacks do a decent job with it, but when you have a guy like that back there he can do some things. You put guys like that in the backfield and you have some guys that can fly. You have to do some things like that when you're playing a team with the speed Grand Valley has."
Thomas, who ran with speed, rushed for 45 yards and a touchdown while Tom Schneider also ran for 17 yards.
Through the air, Kyle Parrish completed 4 of 9 passes for 102 yards.
As a team, Ferris only threw it 10 times.
The Bulldogs totaled 210 yards of total offense while Grand Valley had 400 yards. Yet, the game was still tightly-contested from start to finish.
"We're young and we don't have as much experience as they have," Freeman said. "They've been in some big games and they know how to win these kinds of games. We're working hard and we're going to get to that point."
But, Ferris showed a lot of pride and battled the No. 1 team in the nation for a full game.
Photo taken by Ed Hyde
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