After losing a heartbreaker 34-32 in the last second to Buena Vista, the Simpson football team heads to Decorah for the final game of the regular season this Saturday.

Simpson (6-3, 4-2 IIAC) will battle Luther (2-7, I-5) in pursuit of their seventh win to close out 2013.  Because Simpson suffered the loss to Buena Vista and Wartburg defeated Central, Simpson is out of playoff contention.

However, the Storm haven’t recorded a seven-win season since 2008, Simpson head football coach Jim Glogowski’s first season at Simpson. In 2009 the Storm were 3-7 overall, in 2010, 2-8, in 2011, 5-5 and last season 6-4.

Glogowski said that getting the win No. 7 would be huge in keeping the positive trend going.

“More important probably to me is that for the second year in a row, we’ve finished no worse than second in the league,” Glogowski said. “We’ve got guys who are going to be juniors next year that know nothing more than finishing in second place if we can take care of business Saturday.”

Glogowski added that Simpson is beginning to cement themselves as the team to reckon with in the Iowa Conference.

“If things go our way, obviously we’re literally a second away from playing for a conference championship,” Glogowski said. “That can certainly be discouraging, but you can also look at it as a positive because we’re right there and we’re beating the top teams in the league on a consistent basis.”

Since suffering the loss to the Beavers, Glogowski explained that the Storm are excited to get back on the field.

“We have the opportunity to end on a high note and get that bad taste out of our mouths from Saturday,” Glogowski said. “We’re excited about the opportunity to play a very unique offense and we’re excited about the challenge.”

Luther is coming off a 31-14 loss against Coe on the road. Having only one conference win over Loras under their belt, the Norse put up a very close 24-21 battle with Wartburg in week six and an impressive showing against Central the following week.

“They’re certainly like a lot of teams in this league, ‘Anybody can beat anybody’ on a given Saturday.” Glogowski said.

Luther’s offense has only thrown for 77 pass attempts on the year. Luther’s top quarterback, JJ Sirios, has completed 17-for-31 passes for 235 yards and three touchdowns. Simpson’s quarterback, Taylor Nelson, has 307 attempts on the year, completing 205 passes for 2,366 yards and 20 touchdowns.

Josh Vos, Luther’s top rusher, has compiled 726 yards rushing off 149 attempts with 10 touchdowns. Luther’s top defensive player, Matt Larson, has a team-high 82 tackles on the season thus far (28 solo, 54 assisted). Aric Elton is second on the team with 77 tackles, but leads the team with eight tackles for loss.

Glogowski said that the Norse run about 85 percent of the time they have the ball.

“They’re definitely going to run the ball first,” Glogowski said. “Certainly they’ll create some challenges running the football and do some things on offense that we’ve never seen before and you have to take a unique approach to.”

Kickoff for the game is set to begin 12 p.m. Follow @SimpAthletics on Twitter for tweet-by-tweet updates of the game between the Storm and the Norse, using the hashtags #IIAC and #d3fb.