Rob Ash, his staff and his players have never been so happy to have to go back to work on a Saturday.
Montana State has yet to have a Saturday football game despite officially opening its 2015 season with the beginning of fall camp on August 9. The Bobcats opened their season under the lights at Bobcat Stadium on Thursday, September 3 with a 45-14 win over Division II Fort Lewis. The last 12 days and counting have served as Montana State’s bye week along with a time to prepare for a showdown at No. 14 Eastern Washington.
MSU defense puts pressure on Eastern Washington offense last season in Bozeman.
“We are extremely ready,” Ash, MSU’s ninth-year head coach, said on Tuesday afternoon. “We are dying to play a game. It feels exactly like we have just had camp again. It’s like we have a second opener. You go through camp and you play that opening game and guys just explode because it’s all practice. Now we get the same thing this week again. It’s Week 1 all over again. It’s like coming out of camp and we are going to explode out of the gates. We will be ready to go.”
Like last year’s instant classic, a 52-51 win by the Eagles in Bozeman, Saturday’s game is of the non-conference variety. With 13 teams in the Big Sky, each league member does not play four other teams each season. In an effort to maintain the rivalry established over the last half-decade or so, MSU and EWU have signed a home-and-home contract before last season to ensure the matchup continues. Saturday will mark the sixth straight season the Eagles and the Bobcats have entered the matchup each nationally ranked. EWU is the three-time defending Big Sky Conference champions and have won or shared the league title in four of the last five seasons. MSU won or shared league titles in 2010, 2011 and 2012 and have made the FCS playoffs four times this decade.
“I think it’s a marquee game in the western half of the United States,” Ash said. “It’s a marquee game nationally as far as FCS football is concerned. It’s two teams that are perennially in the playoffs, two teams that are regionally rivals, bus trip rivals and teams that just simply have to play. It wouldn’t be a season without playing Eastern Washington.”
MSU senior Tanner Roderick catches a pass against EWU last season in Bozeman.
Although the matchup pits two of the top programs in the West against one another, the Eagles have had the upper hand lately and historically. Eastern Washington has won three straight and six of eight against MSU since Ash took over in 2007. Dating back to 1948, EWU has a 28-10 advantage over Montana State and has won five of the last six games at home. MSU’s lone win in Cheney under Ash came in 2011.
Kane Ioane has been at Montana State since 2000 as either a player or an assistant coach. He’s been involved in four wins over the Eagles in 15 outings. Yet he still hopes the teams continue to play even if it’s not part of the league schedule.
“I love it,” Montana State’s first-year defensive coordinator and longtime assistant said. “I think Eastern Washington is one of the premier programs in the country and one of the premier programs in the conference. That’s the unfortunate thing of having 13 teams in our conference not getting to play everybody every year. When that rotation comes along when they are not on our schedule, I think our players and our fan base would be disappointed if we didn’t play. I love playing against Eastern Washington and competing against the best.”
EWU owns an advantage over Montana State as of late but the Eagles themselves are struggling early on. Eastern dropped its opener to Oregon, 61-42, before losing a heartbreaker to No. 8 Northern Iowa last week, 38-35. The Eagles are 0-2 for the first time since 2011 and just the second time in Beau Baldwin’s largely successful eight seasons that includes the Big Sky titles and the 2010 FCS national championship.
Linebacker Cole Moore takes on running back Quincy Forte in 2014
“We have to own up to what we are right now,” Baldwin said in an EWU press release following the loss to UNI. “We have to own the fact that it is going to take even that much more. We are in a little bit of a hole at the beginning of the year – nobody wanted to be in it. But every one of us have to figure out what are the little things we have to do to fight our way out of it. But it’s not about the next eight or nine weeks, but what are we going to do tonight and tomorrow in terms of prep for this week. This is a huge game.”
Montana State has a storied and bitter rivalry with the Montana Grizzlies. The Cat-Griz game is one of the games of the year in the FCS year in and year out. The final week of the season, EWU takes on Portland State with the way the new schedule is set up. But the Eagle players and coaches have always made no bones about the fact that the Bobcats and the Grizzlies are the teams they consider their primary rivals. The feeling is mutual on the Montana State side of things.
“The main rival is across the way but Eastern is the next rival in the league,” MSU offensive coordinator Tim Cramsey said. “Eastern has been, since I’ve been here and well before that, elite in the FCS. We have to be able to go there and execute and put some points on the board. This is a rivalry game whether it’s conference or not. We have to treat it as such.”
Photos by Brooks Nuanez. All Rights Reserved.
