D2football.com's Tony Nicolette: Week 7 GLIAC Preview

 D2Football.com's Tony Nicolette breaks down Bulldogs-Chargers and the rest of the GLIAC.

Hillsdale #25 (4-1, 4-2) at Ferris (3-2, 4-2)

Hillsdale Coach Keith Otterbein will hit is old stomping grounds...and it'll be the first time in a lot of years (17 or so) that he won't be facing Jeff Pierce when he does. Instead, he'll get Tony Annese's club that has started to give clubs fits with their unique offense and feisty defense. The question now is whether the Bulldogs can avoid a letdown after beating arch-rival Grand Valley for the first time since the late '90's.

For Hillsdale to succeed, they have to avoid the mistakes they made a week ago at Wayne. They turned the ball over four times and a couple of key penalties that proved costly (including one that took a long TD off the board). The Chargers need to execute cleanly like they would normally expect, and then cash-in on drives. They also need to get some big plays going...didn't really do that offensively last week. As for Ferris, they basically need to keep doing what they're doing. They won last week, and maybe should have the week before. What they must avoid the kind of performance like they had three weeks ago against Walsh where they trailed in the fourth quarter and needed to get a couple of turnovers in order to win.

Picking winners in this league is always goofy...I've written about that for years. This game is no exception so I'm going with my hunch: Ferris will have some sort of letdown (not sure why I think that...just do) and Hillsdale will come out crisp. It won't be easy by any stretch, but Hillsdale gets a big day from Joe Glendening and wins the turnover battle to take the game. Hillsdale 27, Ferris 24.

Rest of the week's action