The final week of the regular season is the traditional rivalry week in the Big Sky Conference, as it is around much of college football. In the Big Sky, playoff seeding and conference championships were on the line in the Montana-Montana State and Sac State-UC Davis rivalry games. Elsewhere, Idaho and Idaho State played out a surreal scene in the Battle of the Domes. This is the Big Sky Scramble, featuring analysis from every game around the conference.
ZERO AT THE BONE: It’s cliche, but the atmosphere at Washington-Grizzly Stadium was electric on Saturday. That’s the simplest way to say it. Montana handled it. Montana State didn’t, most notably on their second drive, when back-to-back false start penalties backed the Bobcats from up from the UM 5 to the 15 and turned a potential touchdown into a Blake Glessner field goal.
A lot of talk about “home-field advantage” refers to mostly intangible benefits. Montana’s is not, and that’s proven five yards at a time.
Anyway, the loss doesn’t expose a fatal flaw for Montana State, which has beaten Weber State and Eastern Washington on the road this year. The Bobcats won’t have to face Montana — or North Dakota State, the only other team with a comparable home atmosphere — until the national championship game, which will be at a neutral site.
For full coverage of the Grizzlies’ win, go to skylinesportsmt.com.
HOPE IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS: Eastern Washington got brutally jobbed by the FCS playoff committee despite beating Portland State 42-28 in the regular-season finale. EWU missed out on a top-eight seed despite a 9-2 record, an FBS win over UNLV, and wins over No. 5 Montana and No. 14 UC Davis. Recency bias screwed the Eagles, who had their only two losses in the last month — by a combined four points to Weber State and No. 7 Montana State.
Monday’s STATS FCS poll confirmed the committee’s folly, putting EWU at No. 4, first among Big Sky teams.
Montana fans have been whining since Sunday morning about the tough path the bracket gave the Griz. Eastern, which finished with the same record and beat UM head-to-head (yes, Montana’s FBS win was much more impressive and the Eagles also have a D-II win), not only has to play a very tough Northern Iowa team in the first round, but then has to travel to Montana. The former isn’t a given — Northern Iowa beat undefeated Big Sky champion Sac State early in the year — and the latter will be damn difficult. If EWU manages both, it will potentially go to No. 3 James Madison, then to No. 2 North Dakota State.
That’s likely the hardest possible path in this year’s bracket, harsh reality for the best offense in the country and the most talented non-seeded team on its side of the draw — and at worst the second most-talented non-seeded team in the entire bracket, behind South Dakota State.
BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH: While important games for playoff positioning were playing out across the rest of the conference, Idaho and Idaho State were taking part in a surreal experience at Holt Arena.
The Tubs at the Club podcast reported on Thursday that Vandals coach Paul Petrino wouldn’t return after the season. Jordan Kaye of the Idaho State Journal reported the same about Idaho State coach Rob Phenicie on Saturday morning.
That meant Saturday’s game featured two coaches who were coaching their last game at their respective schools. Idaho scored two touchdowns in the first quarter, including one by former Montana fullback/linebacker Trase Le Texier. Neither team scored the rest of the game, and Petrino evened his Battle of the Domes record at 2-2. The teams combined for four turnovers. Idaho State missed two field goals, and lost despite outgaining the Vandals 246 to 218.
That’s a pretty fair epitaph for Phenicie’s tenure at Idaho State. The former Montana offensive coordinator got the Bengals to 6-5 in 2018, his second year, and out to a 3-3 start in 2019. Starting with a 45-21 loss to Idaho midway through that year, ISU has gone 3-20 since, with two of those victories coming in the 2021 spring season. Six of those losses have been by one score or fewer, including a near-upset of Sacramento State this season. It’s been a baffling fall from optimistic mediocrity to below the basement for the Bengals, and that spelled the end of the line for Phenicie.
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HOW DREARY TO BE SOMEBODY: Northern Arizona beat Cal Poly handily, 45-21, in San Luis Obispo as freshman quarterback RJ Martinez returned to the lineup. Martinez finished 11 of 22 for 167 yards and a touchdown, but the Lumberjacks poured it on Poly anyway as fellow freshman Kevin Daniels ran for 280 yards and five touchdowns. That’s the best rushing performance in the conference since Josh Davis’ 328 for Weber State in 2019. Daniels also has the second-best (229 vs. Southern Utah) and the sixth-best (177 vs. Idaho) rushing days in the Big Sky this year.
At 6-foot-2, 225 pounds, Daniels fits the profile of a power back but he’s plenty shifty too. On each of his last three touchdown runs against Cal Poly, he made the crucial defender miss in space before taking it to the house.
With the win, NAU finished 5-6 overall and 4-4 in conference, tying Portland State for the winner of the Most Average Team in the Big Sky award. There wasn’t much reason to pay attention to the Lumberjacks in 2021 — no big upsets (except a non-conference win over Arizona), no shocking losses and just four games decided by two scores or fewer (and one of those, a 40-24 loss to UC Davis, stretches that definition to the extreme).
There wasn’t much reason to pay attention to the Lumberjacks in 2021. With an under-the-radar year of experience for Daniels and Martinez, the Big Sky Freshman of the Year, there might be in 2022.
ALL OVERGROWN BY CUNNING MOSS: Sacramento State’s 27-7 win over UC Davis gave the Hornets the Causeway Classic trophy, the undisputed Big Sky title and a top-four seed in the FCS playoffs.
With a potential game against South Dakota State waiting in the second round, Sac State is a popular upset pick. The Jackrabbits finished 8-3 with three close losses but also smashed FBS Colorado State and beat No. 2 overall seed North Dakota State in the Dakota Marker Game.
Most of the press around Sacramento State this year has gone towards the Hornets’ offense, both because of its unique two-quarterback system and because the head coach, Troy Taylor, is explicitly an offense-first guy.
If Sac State is going to avoid its second-straight loss as a seed, though, the Hornets’ best hope might rest on its defense, led by former Montana player Andy Thompson. Taylor’s hands-off approach to the defense has allowed Thompson, Jerome Souers’ former DC at Northern Arizona, to build one of the best defenses in the conference. They’re not on the level of Montana or Montana State, but Sac State’s defense is third in the Big Sky in scoring defense and fourth in total defense.
The Hornets list four starters on the defensive line but played against UC Davis with three down linemen and junior Ariel Ngata as the standup defensive end. Linebacker Marcus Hawkins is the star with 74 total tackles, five sacks and three interceptions. Defensive lineman Josiah Erickson has nine sacks, and safety Marte Mapu and former Montana State cornerback Munchie Filer III each have four interceptions.
The win over UC Davis marked the third time in five weeks Sac State has held an opponent to single digits, including a shutout against Martinez, Daniels and Northern Arizona.
In a potential game against South Dakota State, the Hornets might not have much more margin than that. The Jackrabbits are 22nd in the country in total defense at 326.7 yards allowed per game (.1 yards behind Sac State).
WILD NIGHTS: With a 48-17 win over Northern Colorado in the season finale, Weber State has scored 110 combined points in two weeks after the Wildcats were eliminated from the playoffs with a 30-18 loss to Portland State.
The Wildcats scored at least 35 points in each of their six wins — but topped out at 24 points in their five losses, and were under 20 points in four of those five games.
Coming into the season, freshman quarterback Bronson Barron was viewed as a strong-armed antidote to Weber’s recent game managers. Barron played in eight games and was OK — 60.9% completions, eight touchdowns, five interceptions — but his final total of 1,515 yards (just under 190 a game) didn’t have the whiff of a revelation. In fact, it looked a lot like what Weber’s quarterbacks have put up in past years. Barron will be a player to watch when the Big Sky comes back in 2022.
