The Monmouth College football team will return to the Cousins Subs Lakefront Bowl this weekend. The Fighting Scots (8-2, 8-1) will play old rivals St. Norbert (7-3, 6-2) in the bowl, which will kick off at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 18, at Raabe Stadium in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.
After winning the 134th Turkey Bowl on Saturday 42-7 over Knox College, Monmouth finished the season with an 8-1 conference record. The record is identical to that of Illinois College but IC beat the Scots 20-17 in September to win the tiebreaker for the Midwest Conference’s automatic bid to the NCAA Division III Football Playoffs. As the second-place MWC team, Monmouth received the bid to the Cousins Subs Lakefront Bowl, which will be played on the campus of Wisconsin Lutheran College.
“It is a great reward for a great season,” said Monmouth coach Chad Braun. “We want the NCAA playoffs and came up three points short of that but this is a great consolation prize for us and we couldn’t ask for a better matchup that renewing a great rivalry with St. Norbert.”
The Green Knights earned the bowl invitation by finishing in a tie for second place in the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference, which was won by Aurora University. St. Norbert took the tie-breaker with a head-to-head win over Concordia-Wisconsin 13-7 in overtime. The Scots beat Concordia-Wisconsin 42-20 in last year’s Lakefront Bowl. St. Norbert’s losses this season are to Eureka (21-17) and Aurora (37-9) in conference and to UW Stevens Point (31-28) in the non-conference. They beat Ripon 23-7 in the season opener for the only common opponent as Monmouth beat Ripon 45-3 last month.
St. Norbert played in the Midwest Conference from 1983-2019. Either St. Norbert or Monmouth won the MWC every year from 1999 to 2020 except for 2002 and 2014. The Scots and Green Knights have met 34 times since 1975 with St. Norbert holding a 24-11 edge. Monmouth won four of the last five matchups including the 2017 and 2019 Midwest Conference Championship games. Both of those games came down to the final play with Monmouth winning 9-6 in overtime in 2017 and 10-7 with a frantic comeback in 2019. St. Norbert won the 2018 MWC Championship Game 10-7 and the 2015 MWC Championship Game 16-7.
“We have the upmost respect for St. Norbert College and I think there will be tremendous interest from both sides with the history and tradition of these two programs and the games we have played in the past,” said Braun. “We had a great experience at the bowl game last year and we know what to expect this year and are looking forward to it.”
For more information about the Cousins Subs Lakefront Bowl, including tickets, live stream and apparel, go to lakefrontbowl.com.
***Courtesy of Nathan Baliva, Monmouth College***
