Following one of the greatest offensive outputs in school history, The University of South Dakota's Noah Shepard has been named D2football.com Co-Offensive Player of the Week. Shepard compiled 506 yards of total offense and threw for five touchdowns in the team's season opener.

Shepard has also been named the NCC Co-Offensive Football Player of the Week. He shared the honor with Adam Perry, who led Western Washington to an upset win over NCAA D1-FCS member UC-Davis.

This is the first time in his career that Shepard (So., Thornton, Colo.) has earned national player of the week honor. In 2006 he was named NCC Co-Offensive Player of the Week on October 23 following the team's 38-14 win over Augustana. Shepard threw for three touchdown passes to go along with his 121 passing yards. He also ran for 87 yards and scored a touchdown. Shepard shares the national honor with Ferris State's C.J. Van Wieren. The FSU quarterback threw for 294 yards on 7-of-8 passing and ran for 118 yards on 17 rushes. He scored five touchdowns, three on the ground and two through the air.

On Thursday Shepard completed 25-of-47 passes for 422 yards and five touchdowns. He also added 84 rushing yards on 18 carries. He finished the game with a quarterback passer rating of 159.5 in the team's 55-45 loss at West Texas A&M. On the day, Shepard completed touchdown passes of 43, 19, 5, 34 and 22 yards. He connected with Brooks Little for three touchdown passes and his other two went to Dan Skelly.

The season opening performance by Shepard also did some damage to the Coyote record book. His 25 completed passes broke the school's previous single game record of 24 which was held by Chris Daniel (1981 vs. Eastern Illinois), Ryan Justice (2002 vs. St. Cloud State) and Wes Beschorner (2005 vs. Minnesota-Duluth). Shepard's 506 yards of total offense, 422 passing yards and five touchdown passes all rank second in USD single game history. Beschorner holds all three of those records as he compiled 519 yards of total offense and threw for 479 yards in 2005 against Nebraska-Omaha. Beschorner set the school record with six touchdown passes in a game in 2005 against Upper Iowa.

South Dakota will be in search of their first win of the season on Saturday, September 8 at 7:00 p.m. when they host Winona State University. USD's game against Winona State at the DakotaDome will be the 2007 home opener.

--courtesy www.usdcoyotes.com