Grizzlies look to keep it rolling against Hornets
Few things in Big Sky Conference football are as impressive these days as the Montana offense.
Unless you consider the Grizzly defense.
“We’re very sound on that side of the ball and they’re playing tremendously hard,” said UM coach Bob Stitt, whose nationally ranked Griz take on Sacramento State on Saturday in a Big Sky game in Missoula. “We just feel like if we don’t turn the ball over on offense, we’re going to be tough to beat. If we don’t put our defense in a situation where they have to defend a short field we’re going to be very hard to beat.”
The 10th-ranked Grizzlies, behind star quarterback Brady Gustafson and the league’s stingiest defense, take on Sacramento State on Saturday afternoon at 2:30 (KFBB Fox-TV, AM-1400, FM-98.3) before a crowd expected to approach 25,000 at Washington-Grizzly Stadium.
Bobcats hope to get over the hump against Weber
Montana, which has dispatched Mississippi Valley State (61-7) and Southern Utah (43-20) in back-to-back weeks and is 1-1 in Big Sky play and 4-1 overall, wraps up a three-game homestand against Sacramento State (1-2, 1-5).
“We know what we’re going to get,” Stitt said. “We’re going to get their best shot and we’ve got to be ready to go.”
The Hornets also realize what they’re in for.
“We’ve got to step it up,” said Weber coach Jody Sears, “because we’re going into one of the premier places to play college football, against an offense that’s extremely productive with many weapons and a defense that has a tremendous amount of team speed.”
Gustafson, the 6-foot-7 senior slinger from Billings West, is one of the leading passers in all of FCS football. He’s thrown for 1,555 yards and 14 touchdowns and is averaging better than 300 yards passing per game.
“It’s a quarterback-driven offense and when your quarterback’s playing well it’s a lot of fun and hard to stop,” Stitt said.
Historically, the Hornets haven’t fared well against the Griz. Montana leads the series 18-1 and suffered its only loss to Sac State five years ago.
The Hornets lost nine of their last 10 last season and only a 41-38 triumph over Montana State a few weeks ago has prevented a winless campaign this fall. Sac State was hammered 40-7 last week by North Dakota.
“We gotta coach better, the kids gotta play better and we gotta execute better,” Sears said. “Long story short, we didn’t play well at all (last week).”
Even though UM is without injured star receiver Jerry Louie-McGee (a knee injury according to published reports), there are tremendous targets for Gustafson, who is completing 66 percent of his throws and has a 14-4 TD-to-INT ratio.
Keenan Curran has three touchdown grabs this fall, while McGee, Justin Calhoun, James Homan and Great Falls native Josh Horner all have two. The receiving corps was completely rebuilt following devastating graduation losses.
But you’d never know it.
“We’re feeling good about it,” Stitt said. “That whole crew was either very young or a transfer and new to our program. We’re trying to keep things consistent offensively where we’re not trying to reinvent the wheel every week so they have to learn new stuff. We want them to get the same calls every week so they can become confident. That receiving crew is becoming a pretty strong crew.”
Ditto the defense, which leads the Big Sky (yielding 295.8 yards per game). The front line features ends Ryan Johnson, Caleb Kidder and Tucker Schye, who have combined for 14.5 tackles for loss. And a linebacking corps led by Josh Buss and Connor Strahm has also been playing especially well in recent weeks.
“They’re good, they’re very good,” Stitt said of his backers. “They can run and they’re physical. What we do up front frees up those guys. It’s fun to watch. They’re a really strong group, as far as leadership goes too. And they all can run. That’s the biggest thing you’ve got to have in today’s game. And they’re great open-field tacklers.”
3 Things To Watch
1. Trap Game? For the second week in a row the Grizzlies appear to be solid favorites at home. With big road games looming the next two weeks at Northern Arizona and Eastern Washington, there’s always the danger of overlooking an opponent. Montana State led Sac State 38-20 before yielding three unanswered touchdowns in the fourth quarter a few weeks ago. The Grizzlies hope to avoid turnovers that might give the Hornets some hope in this one.
2. The Hot Hand. Can Brady Gustafson keep this up? The senior quarterback has thrown for 1,084 yards the last three weeks. With 3,579 career passing yards, he is 55 yards away from passing Brent Pease, 12th on the all-time Grizzly passing list. Andrew Selle, like Gustafson a Billings West graduate, is 11th on the list at 4,131 yards.
3. Seeking turnovers. Usually the top teams in the nation are also among the leaders in turnover margin. But Montana is minus-one in that category this season. The Grizzlies have 11 takeaways and 12 giveaways so far, a statistic that probably needs to turn around if UM is to have a championship campaign.
– Scott Mansch