Lakeland/Aurora Game Notes  PDF

With its championship hopes extinguished for this season, the Lakeland University football team can still play spoiler when it closes out its season against Aurora University Saturday night at 6 p.m. at Taylor Field.

Two of the top-rated offenses in NCAA Division III square off when the Muskies (4-5 overall, 3-3 NACC) will welcome the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference champions on Senior Night for 12 seniors in what promises to be a chilly evening. Aurora enters with a 6-0 mark in the NACC (8-1 overall), but Lakeland will try to put a blemish on that mark just as it did to 2018 conference champion Eureka, handing the Red Devils what turned out to be their only conference loss last season.

The Muskies are in a rare position, as this is the first time since 2012 that they enter the season finale already eliminated from NACC championship consideration. Lakeland won or shared the title four straight years from 2014-17, had an outside shot entering its final game last season due to its win over Eureka, and also finished second in 2013.

Lakeland enters off a 34-26 loss at Benedictine last week. The Muskies continued to struggle on the road in conference, where they have losses by 1, 5 and 8 points. Larry Rivers (Jr.-Dearborn Heights, Mich.) rushed for 111 yards, his sixth 100-yard rushing game of the season, Dezmon Eddie (Sr.-Alexandria, La.) added 84 yards on the ground and two touchdowns and Logan O'Neill (Sr.-Spokane Valley, Wash.) completed 19 of 38 passes for 248 yards in his first start of the season.

Aurora clinched the NACC regular season title and the league's automatic berth to the Division III playoffs with a 62-7 win over Wisconsin Lutheran last week. The Spartans built a 35-0 lead by halftime and finished outgaining the Warriors 556-264 while also topping the 50-point mark for the fifth time this season.

The matchup features a pair of top 10 offenses in Division III, with Aurora coming in sixth nationally with 513.1 yards per game while Lakeland is eighth with 501.3 yards/game. The Spartans rank ninth in D-III in passing offense (328.0), while the Muskies are ninth nationally in rushing offense at 286.7 yards/game. Aurora's 47.1 points per game is seventh-best in Division III, while Lakeland is averaging 38.9 points per game this season, 30th best in the nation.

Aurora is coached by former Green Bay Packers wide receiver Don Beebe, in his first year with the Spartans. Beebe played in 1996-97 for the Packers, and was a member of Green Bay's Super Bowl XXXI championship team.