MISSOULA — Perhaps all the Montana offense needed for a spark is a visitor from North Dakota. Or perhaps all it needed was Makena Simis at the helm.
For the second time this season, the Grizzlies hosted a school from Great Plains, each time with a first-time starting quarterback under center. The Griz opened their season with a 38-35 upset of four-time defending national champion North Dakota State. In his first career start, junior quarterback Brady Gustafson threw for 434 yards and four touchdowns in the unveiling of first-year head coach Bob Stitt’s up-tempo offense.
Over the next six weeks, Montana’s offense mustered just 22.4 points per game, partially because Gustafson suffered a leg injury in UM’s third game of the season as UM lost three of five. On Saturday, with the University of North Dakota in town and Simis, UM’s third-string quarterback, making his first career start, the Montana offense looked as explosive as in its debut.
Simis completed 15-of-22 passes for 321 yards and tied a school record with six touchdowns as Montana’s big-play abilities returned in full force in a 42-16 victory in front of 25,014 here on Saturday.
“Makena did a great job of executing the game plan,” Stitt said after his squad moved to 3-1 in Big Sky Conference play, 4-3 overall. “He gave our receivers a chance. When people are playing man to man against you, you have some threats outside, some weapons outside but you can’t just throw the ball up and over throw them. He gave our guys a chance every single time and they made plays.”
Montana defensive end Tyrone Holmes takes down North Dakota running back Brady Oliviera’s with one hand behind the line of scrimmage/by Evan Frost
Simis’ six touchdowns tied a UM for a school steeped in quarterback tradition. The only other Griz to toss six touchdowns are Dave Dickenson (Boise State, 1995), Brian Ah Yat (Stephen F. Austin, 1998) and Jordan Johnson (Weber State, 2011). Simis threw a 23-yard touchdown to senior Ben Roberts in the first quarter, touchdowns of 36 and 63 yards to junior Ellis Henderson in the second quarter, a 12-yard touchdown toss to Josh Horner and TD passes of 74 and 22 yards to Jamaal Jones in the third quarter as Montana built a 42-10 lead, it’s largest of the season.
“I didn’t know I tied that record until about five minutes ago so that’s pretty cool,” Simis, a sophomore from Boise, said following the game. “I found out it was JJ’s too and we are pretty good buddies. It will be pretty cool to talk to him about that. Today, I just felt comfortable. We knew they were going to bring a lot of dudes and our offensive line was doing a great job of picking that up. I felt like I could sit back there and it’s easy when you have dudes on the outside who can create separation. All I had to do was get them the ball.”
The loss is North Dakota’s third straight after a 4-1 start. Idaho State rallied from a 31-15 deficit with 22 unanswered points in a 37-31 win in Grand Forks two weeks ago. Last week, UND blew a 24-10 fourth-quarter lead to Weber State, who rallied for a 25-24 win. North Dakota hosts No. 21 Montana State next week. The Bobcats are coming off a 63-7 win over East Tennessee State in the only non-conference game on a weekend that saw all 13 Big Sky teams in action.
“We still have a lot of confidence,” UND senior inside linebacker Will Ratelle said after piling up 12 tackles in the loss. “We have guys who can play. Our coaches do a good job of game planning and scheming. We just have to come together as a team. We’ve lost our last three games and I thought this was our worst loss. But we still have three more games left and if we win the next three games, I think we have a chance to maybe be in the playoffs. I don’t know but our confidence is still up.”
Ellis Henderson (7) goes up in the endzone over North Dakota defensive back Tanner Palmborg (33) to catch the second of Makena Simis’ six touchdown passes/by Evan Frost
North Dakota puts a high priority of stacking the box and bringing pressure with its front seven against both the run and the pass. UND entered the game on Saturday allowing a Big Sky-low 71 rushing yards per game. The strategy in turn leaves North Dakota’s cornerbacks out on an island in one-on-one man coverage.
Jones, a captain and former University of Washington transfer, caught four passes for 139 yards to move into sixth place all-time in UM school history in receiving yards. Henderson, a lightning fast former Hawaii transfer, used his speed to burn the coverage deep on multiple occasions, including a catch and run down the Griz sideline for a 63-yard touchdown to give UM a 21-10 lead just before halftime. Henderson finished with three catches for 114 yards. Jones now has 42 catches for 719 yards and five scores this season. Henderson has 29 catches for 522 yards and five touchdowns. Saturday marked the third time the duo has surpassed 100 yards receiving each in a single game.
“I don’t think you can compare it to anywhere else, especially in the FCS,” Simis said. “We have two dudes who can run by every corner in this conference so all I have to do is put it up in the air and don’t overthrow it.
“We wanted to step into the protection and get the ball to those outside guys because when it’s one-on-one out there, if you make one guys miss, you can easily have a touchdown. We knew we could hit that but we also knew we could run the ball and I think we did a really good job of both today.”
Employing a hybrid tight end that has been absent during the season’s first half, Montana rushed for 162 yards on 46 carries, led by 57 yards from senior John Nguyen and 45 yards on 16 touch carries from sophomore Treshawn Favors.
North Dakota entered the game with no intention to hide its offensive desires. Outside of a 34-9 loss to NDSU in which the Bison smothered their in-state rivals for four rushing yards, UND entered Saturday averaging 264 rushing yards per game. True freshman running back John Santiago entered the action leading the Big Sky in carries and rushing yards.
North Dakota freshman running back John Santiago breaks through the defense for an 80-yard touchdown run/by Evan Frost
On the first play of the game, it looked like UND’s dominance in the ground game would continue. Santiago took a handoff off the right tackle, put his foot in the ground and turned on the burners, sprinting to an 80-yard touchdown as UND took a 7-0 lead in the first 11 seconds.
“That’s a play we’ve been practicing a lot during practice and I knew it was going to be open from the get-go because they didn’t look prepared for it,” Santiago said. “I saw the opportunity and hit it.
“We knew we were going to fly high after that but have to keep doing that throughout the whole game and I don’t think we did that.”
Santiago would finish with a career-high 178 yards, his fifth straight week over 100, but averaged a more reasonable 4.6 yards per carry after the initial touchdown run. Santiago totaled 145 yards on just 12 carries before halftime. He averaged 3.3 yards on 10 second-half carries.
“We just needed to realize that we needed to wake up,” said UM senior middle linebacker Jeremiah Kose after finishing with nine tackles and a third quarter interception. “We seem to start slow at the beginning of every game and after halftime too. I think we just needed to wake up. We didn’t really adjust anything, really. We just had to be more gap sound. We didn’t have people at the right places on that first play.”
The Montana defense kept constant pressure on UND backup quarterback Ryan Bartels, particularly after halftime. Bartels started in place of injured sophomore Keaton Studsrud. He completed 10-of-21 passes for 113 yards and a seven-yard touchdown to Luke Stanley in the fourth quarter. But his inconstant play was not enough for a UND offense that could not keep pace with the explosive Grizzlies.
Montana defensive end Derek Crittenden reaches for North Dakota wide receiver Josh Seibel/by Evan Frost
“For us, we aren’t throwing the ball real well and we think with our top quarterback, we were getting better at throwing it and we are also a better running team when he is in there and he’s not with us right now so we are trying to adjust,” UND second-year head coach Bubba Schweigert said. ‘It’s affecting us a bit. We didn’t protect well enough today either. Our attack has changed the last two weeks without our starting quarterback. There’s a reason you have a starting quarterback. Other programs maybe have guys who are pretty similar. I love Ryan. He competes here but he’s not the same type of player as Keaton ability-wise.”
The win avenges two straight home losses by Montana that came in heart-breaking fashion. The Grizzlies lost 20-19 to Cal Poly on a last-second field goal the second weekend of the season before taking its first bye week. Montana entered its second bye week last week fresh off a 24-21 overtime loss to Weber State, the Grizzlies’ first loss to the Wildcats in Missoula since 1987.
“I was talking to the coaches on the headset and I didn’t know what to do with myself in the fourth quarter because it wasn’t a nail biter where you are all stressed out trying to figure out a way to pull something off,” Stitt said. “It was nice to have this thing under control and have the kids go out and play the way we knew they could play. It’s been a long time. We did that the first week out. It’s been a long time since we’ve really broken out and played well. I’m really proud of them.”
Photos by Evan Frost (see here) for Skyline Sports. All Rights Reserved.
