What did Northwestern State's Blaine McCorkle and players have to say about Minnesota?
The Northwestern State Demons will have their hands full this upcoming Saturday when they make the 1,080-mile trip north from Natchitoches, Louisiana. The Demons, in their second year under head coach Blaine McCorkle, will enter the game coming off their first win in well over a year and a half.
Last week, Northwestern State defeated Alcorn State 20-10 to snap a 20-game losing streak. It was a monumental win for a program that has fought through unimaginable adversity after the murder of one of their own, Ronnie Caldwell Jr, in 2023.
After cancelling the remainder of their season following Caldwell’s murder, and seeing insurmountable roster changes in each of the last two offseasons, the win was a long time coming for McCorkle and his program.
“That was a special night for our entire campus and the city of Natchitoches and for our players especially,” McCorkle said in a recently released interview from the Northwestern State Athletic Department. “So it was really nice to see the smiles on their faces, finally in a locker room, and enjoy that moment.”
While the Demons enjoyed the win, McCorkle knows he needs his team to refocus for this upcoming weekend.
“Minnesota is not going to care less,” he said in reference in Northwestern State’s recent win. “We’ve got to be working on Minnesota, you know, we can’t be patting ourselves on the back, and we’re going to go to class on campus in the cafeteria. Everybody’s gonna tell us how great we are.
But Minnesota ain’t worried about that.”
“Big Ten is tough, hard-nose physical football, and I’m loving watching their film right now, you know, because as an old offensive line coach, that’s just kind of what you live for is Big Ten football,” he continued to say. “Offensive lines in the Big Ten are real, those guys are big and they can move, and they’re angry when they do it, you know, they’re fun to watch. So we definitely got our work cut out for us.”
Demons’ players looking forward to the challenge
A pair of interviews with Demons’ safety Christian Williams and offensive lineman Isaiah Ybarra were also released, both players offering the same sentiment as their head coach.
“It was good, pretty cool experience, but, you know, at the end of the day, we got to move on,” Williams said about the win last Thursday. “We celebrated, did everything we needed to do, but now it’s Minnesota time, so we focus on them.”
“It’s been forever since we last won a game, but we need to keep going,” Ybarra said. “Or else that’s when complacency sits in and that’s just rat poison, like Nick Saban said.”
Both Williams and Ibarra also emphasized that Northwestern State isn’t making the trip to Minneapolis just for fun.
“Just trying to go there and actually win,” Williams said. “We’re not going there just for a trip, just to have fun, just to see the nice stadium. We’re actually going there to win. We’re focused, and we want to let the world know that Northwestern State is not the team to be messed with.”
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