By: Con Marshall
CSC Sports Information
Two winless, but hungry, football teams will be colliding Saturday evening when the Chadron State Eagles host the Black Hills State Yellow Jackets at Elliott Field in Chadron. Kickoff will be at 6 oāclock. It will be the 81st time the teams from the institutions have met on the gridiron.
Both teams are 0-2, but have shown promise against tough opponents and each will be going all out to launch its RMAC schedule with a victory.
The Eagles have fallen 17-3 to Division I Northern Colorado and lost to Nebraska-Kearney 41-21 last Saturday night, but have out-gained their foes 639 to 597 yards.
Meanwhile, Black Hills has given two tough teams all they wanted. Sioux Falls edged the Yellow Jackets 27-21 in their opener, and national-ranked and perennial-power Grand Valley State of Michigan won by just 48-36 over the Jackets last Saturday in Grand Rapids.
Grand Valley won its first game 45-9 while Sioux Falls defeated arch-rival Northern State 42-28 in its second game.
What can fans expect Saturday night? It may be an aerial circus.
In its two games, Black Hills has rushed for just 79 yards, but quarterback Luke Duby has completed 62 of 87 passes (71.3%) for 607 yards. Duby, a 6-3, 220-pound fifth-year senior, has a favorite target.
Heās TJ Chukwurah, a 5-11, 190-pound junior, who has already caught 22 passes for 291 yards and six touchdowns. Statistically, both Duby and Chukwurah are leading the RMAC by significant margins after all the teams have played two non-conference foes.
Chukwurah has played against the Eagles in two previous games. In 2022, he caught one pass for 28 yards and the next year one for 16. He did not play against the Eagles in last yearās game at Spearfish in late October, but has been a terror for the opponents so far in 2025.
In the game at Grand Valley last Saturday, both teams went wild through the air and barely moved the ball on the ground. Black Hills got just 21 yards rushing and the Michigan team only 44.
However, the Yellow Jackets completed 38 passes for 359 yards and four touchdowns, three of them to Chukwurah, who caught a dozen tosses for 182 yards. Grand Valley completed 23 of 34 passes for 392 yards and four TDs. Eleven Lakers caught passes. Five of them had catches that were at least 29 yards long.
Last yearās Chadron State-Black Hills State game also featured lots of passing, particularly by the Eagles. They definitely had difficulty rushing against the Yellow Jackets, earning just two net positive yards on the ground when sacks and losses are factored in. CSCās two running backs combined to carry 20 times for just 33 yards.
Thus, the Eagles were forced to throw the ball. Quarterback DJ Ralph completed 33 of 47 passes for 408 yards. It was 10th time a CSC quarterback had thrown for more than 400 yards, but it took a toll on Ralph. He was sacked five times for 44 negative yards and it was the last game he played in 2024 before having surgery to repair his left shoulder.
Ralph has returned as the Eaglesā primary quarterback and has thrown the ball well when heās protected, but he has frequently been under siege. So far, he has competed 32 of 57 tosses for 367 yards, but has been intercepted three times and has been sacked eight times, including five by Kearney, in the two contests.
Last year, the Eagles outgained the Jackets 410 to 279, but lost 21-18 when Black Hills running back Cameron Goods broke loose on a 45-yard jaunt and scored with 2:46 left to play.
Goods, a 6-foot, 210-pound senior, is still playing. So far this season, he has carried 16 times for 46 yards. Danny Davis, a 6-2, 215 junior, leads the team with 13 rushes for 62 yards.
CSCās top ball rushers so far have been junior transfer Daytuawn Pearson with 16 carries for 107 yards and redshirt freshman Quincey Ryker with 26 totes for 103 yards.
The Chadron State-Black Hills series dates back to 1912, the second year Chadron State was in operation. Although the rivalry was interrupted by both World War I and II, the football teams generally met annually and sometimes twice a year in the 1920s until 1952. Thatās when an 11-year lull began for reasons no one can explain since the institutions are just 150 miles apart and had similar enrollments.
Beginning in 1964 and through 1995, the Eagles and the Yellow Jackets met on the gridiron every autumn. In the early ā90s, Chadron State joined the RMAC and soon was playing a full slate of conference games. So, beginning in 1996, the CSC-BHSU rivalry was suspended again until 2012 when the Yellow Jackets also became a conference member.
CSC has won eight of the 12 games since then and holds a 60-18-2 margin in the all-time series. But the Yellow Jackets have won the last three games. Prior to last yearās donnybrook, when the Eagles missed two field goals and an extra point and also lined up for another field goal, but problems with the snap and hold kept the ball from being kicked, Black Hills won 32-23 in 2022 and 55-19 in ā23 when the Jackets finished with 556 yards of offense and threw for five touchdowns.
As most fans know, Chadron State Head Coach Jay Long and Black Hills mentor Josh Breske are well acquainted. Beske was a four-year starter in the Yellow Jacketsā offensive line 2006 through 2009. Long was the Jacketsā offensive line coach the first three years and the head coach when Breske was a senior and earned NAIA All-American honors. Breske was the first All-American that Long coached.
After three years as the Jacketsā head mentor, Long returned to his alma mater as Chadron Stateās head coach in 2012. That fall, Breske joined the Eaglesā coaching staff as a graduate assistant and earned his masterās degree from CSC in 2013.
Breske became Black Hills Stateās head coach in December 2019. Because of the COVID pandemic, the Yellow Jackets played just two games in the fall of 2000, neither of them against CSC as both that were scheduled ended up being canceled. Black Hills had a 4-7 record in 2021, reversed that mark the next year and has finished 6-5 each of the last two seasons.