It would be easy to consider the Grand Valley State University football team an underdog this Saturday when they face-off against Colorado State University-Pueblo.

After all, CSU-Pueblo (11-0) finished the regular season ranked No. 3 in the country, and earned the top seed in Super Region Four of the NCAA Division II playoffs.

Just don’t try telling GVSU (10-2) senior linebacker Charles Hill that.

“I don’t really consider ourselves as underdogs. I think we’re as good as any team in this nation,” Hill said. “We just gotta go out what we’ve been doing the past six weeks and that’s executing our game plan and going out and flying to the ball… As long as we do that, we should be fine.”

For Hill and the rest of the GVSU defense, it’ll start with trying to contain junior quarterback Chris Bonner, who is one of the region’s finalists for the top individual award in Division II college football, the Harlan Hill Trophy.

Bonner has completed 60 percent of his passes for 3,116 yards passing, and 30 touchdowns, while throwing just eight interceptions to lead a CSU-Pueblo offense that averaged 43.8 points per game and the sixth most yards a contest in the country (518.5).

“Their quarterback—6’7” big tall kid—kind of reminds me of Isiah Grimes,” GVSU head coach Matt Mitchell said. “I think for us, we know where he’s gonna be. He’s not a runner. He doesn’t run. He has an arm. A lot of their passes are play-action passes off of runs so you gotta be able to stop the run on them and get them to third downs.”

Junior wide receiver Paul Browning was Bonner’s favorite target on the season, racking up 1,012 yards receiving on 50 catches, and caught 10 touchdown passes.

On the ground, the ThunderWolves are led by a couple of sophomores. Chris Ashe led the team with 888 yards rushing and Cameron McDondle chipped in with 722 yards on the ground, while averaging an impressive 7.4 yards per carry.

“They have balance on both sides of the ball, just like we do, so it’s gonna be a competitive ball game,” Mitchell said.

Defensively, the ThunderWolves boast one of the top pass rushers in the country. Defensive end Darius Allen leads the country in sacks (13.5) and is third in the country in sacks per game (1.2).

“Their defensive line is good, might be as good as a defensive line as we’ve seen,” Mitchell said. “They’ve got really big kids inside and some athletes off the edge. That’s the strength of their team is the defensive front.

“I think that’s probably going to be the biggest matchup, is to see if our offensive line is able to hang in there. We have to be able to run the ball obviously, and then protect Heath. We can’t let Heath get hit.”

The CSU-Pueblo defense allows an average of just 18.5 points a game, and is one of the best units in the country at forcing its opponents into mistakes. On the year, the ThunderWolves have forced the fourth most turnovers in the country (32).

“They’re big, fast, and they’re pretty physical,” GVSU junior quarterback Heath Parling said. “They caused a crazy amount of turnovers. You just watch them on film and they’re getting turnovers left and right. Their front seven is big and physical, and their linebackers are quick, and their secondary is athletic.

“Just watching them on film, you get the sense that this is a pretty legit defense that’s gonna be tough to score on.”

For Parling and GVSU, they’ll look to earn the win the same they have the past six weeks—as a team.

“We do fight for each other and no one really cares on this team who gets the credit,” Parling said. “When you don’t really have any superstars so to say, you just have a bunch of good players who want to be apart of team, you can accomplish a lot and that’s what I think we’re trying to go for here.”

The game is scheduled to start at 2 p.m. EST. You can follow @GVLSports on Twitter for live game updates.