St. John’s tight end stands out, and four more things to know about Minnesota college football

In his first two seasons in the St. John’s program, tight end Joey Gendreau caught 29 passes for 366 yards and six touchdowns.

Last season, as a junior, he was third on the team with 63 receptions for 810 yards and five touchdowns.

In his senior season, the Minnetonka High School product is gaining a lot of attention. After catching six passes for 115 yards and four touchdowns in the Johnnies’ 70-0 victory over Macalester on Oct. 11, he was named to the d3football.com National Team of the Week for the third time this season.

Gendreau also was named to the team twice in September. He’s the first Johnnies player to earn the honor three times in the same season and just the third to do it three times overall, joining Blake Elliott (once in 2002 and twice in 2003) and Aaron Syverson (once in 2023 and twice in 2024).

With the four TD receptions against Macalester, Gendreau became the fifth player in program history to catch four touchdown passes or more in a game. He leads the MIAC in receiving touchdowns (seven) and is second in receiving yards (577) and fourth in receptions (37).

Gendreau ranks 14th in NCAA Division III with 117.4 receiving yards per game this season. No other tight end at any level of NCAA football is averaging more than 86.6 receiving yards per game this season. Gendreau is averaging 7.4 receptions per game, a mark that also leads tight ends at any level of NCAA football. He is tied with Luke Bodine from Mary (N.D.) of the NSIC for the national lead among tight ends with seven touchdown receptions. Bodine has played in seven games, while Gendreau has played in five.

St. John’s and Concordia (Moorhead), tied for third place in the MIAC, will meet in Moorhead on Saturday.

Both the Johnnies, No. 10 in the d3football.com poll, and Cobbers are coming off impressive victories last week. The Johnnies’ victory over Macalester was their fourth shutout of the season, and the Cobbers defeated Hamline 58-12 in St. Paul.

The Johnnies’ only loss in conference play was 17-10 at Bethel on Oct. 4, and the Cobbers’ only loss was 17-16 at St. Olaf on Sept. 20.

Bethel plays host to St. Olaf on Saturday, while Carleton plays host to Hamline.

In its first four seasons as a member of the Pioneer League, St. Thomas went 16-1 in conference games at O’Shaughnessy Stadium, winning its first 14 games before Drake ended the streak last season.

The Tommies (3-3, 1-2 Pioneer) go into their game against Valparaiso on Saturday at O’Shaughnessy Stadium looking for their first home conference victory of the season.

St. Thomas is coming off a 57-13 victory at Davidson last weekend. The 57 points and the Tommies’ eight touchdowns are single-game bests for the program during the Division I era. The Tommies scored at least 20 points in back-to-back quarters (second and third) for the first time in the Division I era and the first time for the program since 2019. They scored their most points since a 54-15 victory over Presbyterian in Nov. 2021.

Valparaiso (1-5, 0-2) is coming off a 41-10 loss at home to Dayton. The Crusaders have a five-game losing streak since opening the season with a 67-10 victory over Virginia-Lynchburg on Aug. 30. Max Samuel, a junior linebacker from Edina, is fourth on the team with 26 tackles.

Crown (3-2, 2-0 UMAC) will try to extend its winning streak to four games when it plays host to Westminster (2-3, 0-2) on Saturday.

Last week, the Polars, who were 2-17 in the previous two seasons, defeated Martin Luther 17-7 in New Ulm for their third consecutive victory. The winning streak is the program’s longest since a four-game winning streak over the final four games of the 2014 season.

Twelve of the 14 NSIC teams are idle this week.