McKINNEY, Texas — The top-ranked Ferris State Bulldogs (14-0) overpowered the Valdosta State Blazers (12-2) 58-17 Saturday night — claiming their first NCAA Division II national championship.

The Bulldogs won with smashmouth football, throwing just seven passes all night. Using their size across the offensive line, the Bulldogs ran the ball on 51 of their 58 plays for 459 yards and five rushing touchdowns in the game. By game’s end, the Bulldogs hit the Blazers for 581 yards, averaging 13.21 yards per play.

“We ran into a really good football team,” VSU head coach Gary Goff said after the game. “Hats off to Ferris State. They’re really good on both sides of the ball. I thought they played a great game and we obviously didn’t.”

In their quest for a fifth national title, the Blazers never looked like the quick-striking, explosive team they’d been most of the season. In fact, the Blazers were held to season-lows in several areas of strength.

VSU posted season-worsts in total yards (268) and rushing yards (110) on Saturday.

Defensively, the Blazers missed multiple tackles that led to long touchdown runs and explosive plays by the Bulldogs.

Ferris State senior quarterback Jared Bernhardt owned the night with 148 yards on 14 carries with three rushing touchdowns Saturday.

But it wasn’t just Bernhardt running wild against the Blazers. Running backs Tyler Minor and Jeremy Burrell combined for 228 yards rushing and two touchdowns. Bernhardt, Minor and Burrell gouged the Blazers for runs of 56, 73 and 78 yards respectively. Adding to the onslaught, running back CJ Jefferson had four carries for 32 yards with one run going for 24 yards.

Mylik Mitchell completed 3 of 6 passes for 122 yards punctuated by a 72-yard hookup with Xavier Wade in the third quarter and a 47-yard strike to Tyrese Hunt-Thompson with 11 seconds to go before halftime.

“Honestly, I believe that’s what it came down to tonight — really tackling,” VSU senior defensive back Cory Roberts said of the team’s poor tackling. “Three of those touchdowns you take away if we make the tackle. We still fought hard, but we could’ve tackled a lot better. I believe…we know we could’ve stayed in it much longer and possibly pulled it out if we had tackled better this game.”

At one point late in the first half, the Blazers had a string of nine missed tackles as the Bulldogs turned a 17-13 first-quarter deficit into a 41-17 lead by halftime.

The Blazers, whose previous season-high for rushing yards allowed was 347 against West Florida Nov. 13, had already given 318 by halftime.

Though the Bulldogs led 20-17 at the end of the first quarter, they had run only seven plays to get 194 yards and three touchdowns. More impressively, the output only took 2 minutes and 35 seconds of possession time.

“Early on, we were doing some good things,” Goff said. “We didn’t capitalize on coming away with a touchdown when they had that first turnover in the first quarter and then we really just couldn’t get them off the field and we couldn’t convert on some third-downs. We started having some injuries pile up over the course of the game, but I’m extremely proud of how the guys continued to battle and play hard.

“When you’re playing a really good football team, the margin of error is very small and we made some critical mistakes. They won the turnover battle and they did a great job running the football. We had no answer for that and then, for the last three quarters, we just couldn’t get anything going offensively so it was kind of a perfect storm in their favor.”

Durham left the game briefly in the first quarter with what appeared to be an ankle injury. However, the injury he suffered was worse than it appeared as Goff revealed that the junior quarterback suffered an AC sprain in his throwing shoulder.

The injury noticeably affected Durham’s ability to throw the ball and the rhythm the Blazers came out with early never returned.

After completing 6 of 13 passes for 89 yards and two touchdowns in the first quarter, Durham hit on just 1 of 8 passes in the second quarter as the Bulldogs began to separate.

“He battled through it,” Goff said of Durham’s injury. “I was proud of the way he fought all night for his team. That’s probably the reason he was a little off with some things. He won’t say that, but that’s the truth of it.”

With many senior holdovers from their 2018 national championship win over Ferris State playing their final collegiate football games on Saturday, Valdosta State now turns the page to the future.

“It’s tough,” Goff said. “It’s tough standing in the locker room with 16 seniors and they’re bawling their eyes out because they know they’re done playing college football. I told them that we love them and it was a great season, it just didn’t end the way we wanted it to. … Hopefully this just makes us hungrier. Hopefully this just pushes us to work that much harder in the offseason and try to get back here.

“Things didn’t go our way tonight, but we’ve still got a bright future. I hope the young guys see that and it just makes them hungrier and pushes them to work that much harder. And they’ve got a great leader (in Ivory Durham) and he’ll make sure the team works hard.”

REACHING 1K

VSU redshirt junior running back Jamar Thompkins had 10 carries for 36 yards on Saturday, giving him 1,001 yards this season. With Thompkins going over 1,000 yards, the Blazers had three 1,000-yard rushers this season as Seth McGill (1,235) and Ivory Durham (1,012) went over the mark as well.

Shane Thomas is the sports editor at the Valdosta Daily Times.