Players from the Northern Michigan University football team huddle together along the sideline during a home game played in the Superior Dome in Marquette earlier this season. (Photo courtesy NMU)

UNIVERSITY CENTER — Turnovers were only one — but probably the leading one — of the things that went disastrously wrong for the Northern Michigan University football team in its game at Saginaw Valley State on Saturday afternoon.

The Wildcats committed six turnovers as the Cardinals didn’t have any in SVSU’s 62-17 blowout. The loss dropped NMU to 0-10 overall and 0-6 in the GLIAC, while Saginaw Valley improved to 5-5 and 2-3.

Northern gets its last chance to record a victory this season at home in the Superior Dome at 1 p.m. Saturday against nonconference Northern State (South Dakota). It will be Military Appreciation Day and Senior Day.

The passing game, or lack of one, really hurt Northern as quarterbacks Aidan Hoard and Jake Bilitz combined to complete 10 of 26 passes for just 56 yards, but more importantly, five interceptions.

Just to add more insult to that injury, two of the pickoffs were returned for touchdowns — a 47-yard return by the Cardinals’ Christian Ellison with 5:53 left in the second quarter that made it 31-0 at the time, and a 30-yard return by teammate Micah Cretsinger with 9:01 remaining in the third to make it 45-0 then.

Three more of the turnovers led to SVSU drives that became TDs and another that led to a Cards’ field goal.

Northern scored a TD in the final minute of each half and added a short 28-yard field goal early in the fourth quarter by Michael Karlen for its points.

The first score happened just after SVSU took a 38-0 lead on a 53-yard scoring pass from SVSU QB Willie Taylor to Derrick Hinton Jr.

On the ensuing kickoff, Northern’s Michael Love fielded it at his own 10-yard line and worked his way downfield for a 90-yard TD, NMU’s longest since Nov. 12, 2022.

The game’s final score was also by the Wildcats as Northern took over at its own 40 with 4:33 left after a solid kickoff return by NMU’s Justin Schiets.

Following five straight runs that got Northern a 2nd-and-11 at the Cardinals 47, NMU called timeout and decided to try the arm of Hoard, who threw four passes and completed two of them for 26 yards to Brock Franklin and 13 yards to KJ King to set the Wildcats up at the SVSU 6.

Franklin then ran to the right and in the end zone for a 6-yard TD run.

On the second play of the fourth, NMU finished off a more-than-seven-minute drive with Karlen’s short field goal that made it 52-10 at the time.

For the day, the Cardinals held a big 458-170 advantage in total yards even as Northern had a slight edge in time of possession.

SVSU rolled up 247 yards passing on 15 of 23 completions between a trio of signal callers. Hinton led all receivers with 131 yards on six catches.

The Cards had 211 yards rushing in 40 attempts with seven players gaining between 20 and 44 yards.

For NMU, Franklin had 52 yards rushing in 19 attempts and Javion Davis 49 yards in 12 tries as the Wildcats totaled 114 yards on the ground in 39 tries.

King was Northern’s leading receiver with four catches for 35 yards.

Information compiled by Journal Sports Editor Steve Brownlee. His email address is sbrownlee@miningjournal.net.