After last weekend’s thrilling win over Concordia-Moorhead, the No. 24-ranked St. Thomas football team will look to push itself back into the playoff picture when it faces off against Carleton College Saturday in Northfield, Minnesota.

The Knights have been outscored in their past six contests this season by an average of almost 32 points per game, but coach Glenn Caruso said the Tommies will still need to devote attention to Saturday’s game.

“It’s possible that you lose a game and still find positives, and conversely, you can win a game and not be happy with the play,” Caruso said. “We’ve seen enough games and coached enough years to know if we’re playing the way we should relative to who we are.”

Quarterback John Gould made his first start of the season and delivered more than 300 yards of total offense and five touchdowns – four through the air, one on the ground. Caruso said he was impressed with Gould’s performance against the Cobbers and that Gould is the projected starter for the Tommies.

“Hopefully (Gould) takes a lot of the good qualities and builds on those,” Caruso said. “(I liked) the way in which he threw the ball efficiently, the way that he threw the ball with touch on the deep passes and the way he went through progressions.”

Caruso mentioned there is still room for improvement from Gould, though.

“Working on mitigating plays that break down, whether that means taking a route we don’t usually take or pulling the ball down,” Caruso said. “Those are the things we have to work on.”

Carleton will counter with a dynamic athlete of its own under center. Quarterback Zach Creighton has amassed more than 1,000 total yards this year, including 458 on the ground.

“We know (Creighton) from recruiting, and (we) liked him a lot. He’s tremendously athletic and can really hurt you with his feet if you get out of position,” Caruso said. “We’ve shown in the past couple weeks that we can get out of position, so that’s gonna force us to test our ability to finish plays.”

With the top five teams in the MIAC playing this weekend, St. Thomas has the potential to move up in the standings and be right back in the playoff mix. Caruso warned that the Tommies can’t get caught up in potential matchups down the road though.

“After the game, we’ll take a look (at the standings), understanding that there’s nothing we can do to control that,” Caruso said. “We’ve already given up the opportunity to control that, and that’s our own fault.”

Tom Pitzen can be reached at pitz2014@stthomas.edu.