MISSOULA – The Furman Paladins came to Missoula talking trash, and they backed it up on Saturday night.
Furman’s relentless front seven held the Montana Grizzlies’ running backs to 24 yards. The Paladins took advantage of the few opportunities they carved out, scoring after a 70-yard pass, on a 53-yard run and after a long interception return. They led 21-20 going into the fourth quarter. It even looked like they had a little magic when Mason Pline high-pointed Tyler Huff’s desperation fourth-down pass with 13 seconds to go to tie the game at 28-28 and send it to overtime.
But in the end, the Grizzlies had Junior Bergen – and the Paladins didn’t.
Bergen returned the opening kick of the game for a 99-yard touchdown and then returned a punt 59 yards for a touchdown early in the fourth quarter. It was enough to get a sputtering Griz offense to overtime, where Clifton McDowell hit Keelan White for a 13-yard touchdown on Montana’s first possession and Trevin Gradney broke up Huff’s final pass on fourth down to send the Grizzlies to the FCS semifinals with a stone-cold classic 35-28 win.
Montana will host either No. 3 South Dakota or unseeded North Dakota State next week in the Grizzlies’ first non-vacated semifinal appearance since 2009 against Appalachian State.
“Good teams find a way to win,” Montana head coach Bobby Hauck said. “Great teams win when they don’t have their A-game and they aren’t playing their best. That was not our best game this season. We found a way to win. And that is a championship effort by the Montana Grizzlies.”
It was, indeed, a gritty win, sparked by that championship effort but even more so by the transcendent talent of Bergen. In the 5-11, 180-pound receiver/returner from Billings, the Griz have a rare player who can – as he did Friday night – redeem a spotty Washington-Grizzly Stadium crowd, a struggling offense and a misfiring kicker with two touches of the ball.
On the opening kickoff, he burst through a line of Furman players, accelerated towards the sideline and then cut back towards the middle, twisting the poor kicker completely around like a man off the street forced to guard Jamal Crawford, and coasted into the end zone in front of the Griz student section.
“The kickoff return to start the game was something we had never run before,” Hauck said. “We put it in on Wednesday. I was proud of those guys for executing that like they did. It was a new play and I think we surprised them a little bit.”
His encore was even better. With 10 minutes left in the fourth quarter and Montana down 21-20, he retreated to his own 40 to catch a punt, got to the left sideline with a wall of blockers in front of him, pointed out to Jaxon Lee the last man he wanted blocked and, once again, stepped into the end zone untouched.
“I saw Jaxon look back at me and I was like, just block somebody,” Bergen said. “Just get in someone’s way. He did, and I just had to beat the last dude.”
The score was Bergen’s fourth career punt-return touchdown, breaking the Montana school record.
McDowell hit Sawyer Racanelli for what turned out to be a crucial 2-point conversion to give Montana a 28-21 lead with 9:40 left.
That looked like the winner, but Furman, despite barely moving the ball outside of the two first-half plays that set up their touchdowns, put together a drive with their last chance.
A late-hit penalty on the long snapper Grayson Pibal gave the Paladins the ball at their own 43 with 1:37 to go.
Huff hit Joshua Harris for a key first down, drew a pass interference penalty against Ryder Meyer to get to the Griz 13 and then, on fourth down, heaved a Hail Mary to the end zone as he was being taken down by the Griz D-line.
It fell perfectly into the hands of the 6-foot-7 Pline, who boxed out his defender for the touchdown to pull Furman within 28-27.
The Paladins lined up to go for 2, but a false start call whistled the play dead, and Furman coach Clay Hendrix then elected to kick the extra point from the 8-yard line to tie it.
Montana took the ball first in overtime and scored first in four plays when McDowell whistled a 13-yard pass to White between two defenders over the middle of the field.
On Furman’s first play, Alex Gubner broke through the line to drop the back for a five-yard loss. Three incompletions later – the last a breakup by a late-arriving Trevin Gradney, who knocked the ball away from Kyndel Dean on the far sideline – and the Griz were celebrating on the field.
“Sometimes games don’t go as smoothly as you’d like,” Hauck said. “We haven’t had a close game in quite a long time, and it was probably good for us to be in a game like that. … We’ve been in the quarterfinals three of the last four years. The two previous times, we’ve not won this game. It’s always a hard game, the other team is always good.”
It was an outcome that seemed uncertain for most of the night as Montana, at first, struggled to put Furman away and then let the Paladins all the way back into the game with crucial mistakes in the second and third quarters.
Furman answered Bergen’s kick return to open the game with a 70-yard pass from Huff to Colton Hinton down to the 1-yard line. Dominic Roberto scored on the next play, and it was 7-7 less than two minutes into the game.
Montana took the lead back on an 8-yard run by quarterback Clifton McDowell after a shanked punt gave the Griz good field position, but again Furman answered right back.
On another third down, Huff juked a defender at the line and went 53 yards for a score.
Montana led 20-14 at halftime after two Nico Ramos field goals, but the Griz couldn’t put away the visitors from Greenville, South Carolina, despite stifling the Paladins’ offense. Aside from the 70-yard pass and the 53-yard run, Furman had just 129 yards on 78 plays.
After making two field goals in a row, Ramos missed a 42-yard try late in the second quarter.
Furman DB Micah Robinson intercepted McDowell midway through the third and returned it to the Montana 19. Four plays later, the Paladins were in the end zone on another short Roberto run to take a 21-20 lead.
Ramos missed another 42-yard try late in the third as scoring chances continued to slip through the fingers of the Montana offense.
But after another three-and-out, Griz punter Travis Benham back-spun a punt perfectly to a stop at the Furman 3-yard line.
Montana’s defense forced a three-and-out, setting the stage for Bergen’s second touchdown return of the night.
And on this night, no one was more ready for the stage than Junior Bergen, the star who sent the Griz to the semifinals.
NOTES: McDowell finished 17 of 31 for 208 yards, and set a new career-high with 118 rushing yards on 21 carries. … Nick Ostmo, with nine carries for 19 yards, was the Grizzlies’ next-highest rusher. Ostmo, Xavier Harris and Eli Gillman combined for 24 yards on 22 carries. … Braxton Hill led Montana’s defense with 10 tackles, while Riley Wilson had two TFLs and TraJon Cotton came up with a huge late-game interception on Furman’s penultimate drive in regulation. … It was the first overtime game played at Washington-Grizzly Stadium since October 10, 2015, a 24-21 loss to Weber State. … Ramos had made nine straight field goals before his back-to-back misses.
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