MOSCOW, Idaho – Saturday’s game between Sacramento State and Idaho at the Kibbie Dome wasn’t just the first time two top-10 teams had played in the Kibbie Dome since 1994. It was also another chance to make a mark for two of the Big Sky’s up-and-coming, nouveau riche contenders.
In the end, an explosive kick return, a costly penalty and an ice-in-the-veins kick gave Jason Eck’s Vandals a 36-27 win over Andy Thompson’s Hornets in the first signature home win of Eck’s so-far-stellar tenure.
Ricardo Chavez’s 30-yard field goal with one second left on the clock put the Vandals up 30-27 and sealed the game, although Ormanie Arnold recovered an ill-fated Sac State lateral on the ensuing kickoff and stumbled into the end zone to provide the (significant to some) final margin.
It was Chavez’s third field goal of the game, including a 50-yarder – the longest of his career at Idaho – late in the first half.
“I came up to coach Eck and I told him, Coach, if we need a field goal to win, this is where I want the ball,” Chavez said. “The coaches did a great job putting me in a position to succeed. … Just going to the kicking net, get the kicks I need (on the sideline), and just rock and roll from there.”
The Vandals put Chavez in position to be the hero thanks to a big kick return from Jermaine Jackson, who hit a crease on the right side of the field and took the ball out past the 35. A Sac State player horse-collared him on the way out of bounds as well, tacking on 15 more yards and putting the ball at the Hornets 49 to start the drive.
With 4:47 left and Sac State holding just one timeout, the strategy from there was obvious – grind the clock down and have Chavez kick the winner without ever giving the ball back to a Hornets offense that had already scored 10 points in the fourth quarter to come back from a 27-17 deficit.
“We were playing that all the way,” Eck said. “I’m a big believer in analytic stuff and giving yourself the best chance to win, so we coached our guys up in that scenario. If I was Sac State there, I would have let us score. I think that’s the play there, is to let us score. Now, we weren’t going to. We called time and went over that, if they let us score, we want to go down at the 1, because we wanted to kick the field goal with no time left.”
The Vandals executed the plan to perfection. Sophomore running back Anthony Woods, who ran for 117 yards and a touchdown on 24 carries despite facing questions about his health and availability all week, converted a third-and-2, then immediately ripped off a 19-yard gain to get the ball down to the 18-yard line – comfortably within Chavez’s range.
Sac State used its only timeout on a second down with 1:38 to go, but by that time it was too late. Woods picked up a yard on both second and third down, and Idaho used its final timeout to stop the clock with five seconds to go.
Chavez’s kick split the uprights, and Arnold’s fumble recovery touchdown on the following kickoff really set off the celebration inside the Kibbie Dome.
The loss snapped a 19-game Big Sky Conference winning streak for Sac State, which won at least a share of the conference title in each of the last three seasons under Troy Taylor, who’s now at Stanford.
After beating the Cardinal and his former boss last week, Thompson – Taylor’s defensive coordinator with the Hornets – took the loss in his first Big Sky game as a head coach despite a battling effort that saw Sac State go down by double digits multiple times before rallying to tie it near the end.
Both teams moved the ball on their opening possessions but settled for field goals, despite Idaho keeping the ball for 14 plays on its first drive and Sac State following up with a 13-play march.
The Hornets couldn’t turn an Idaho fumble into points, turning the ball over on downs in Vandals territory, and Idaho went on to take a 13-3 lead late in the half on Woods’ 2-yard run and Chavez’s 50-yarder before Sac State struck back on a 5-yard pass from Kaiden Bennett to Austin Jerrard to make it 13-10 at halftime.
The Hornets’ last-second scoring drive was kept alive by a post-play unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on Idaho that turned a third-down stop and a likely field-goal try into a Sac State first down at the Idaho 5.
“There’s still things we can clean up and play better,” Eck said. “I was really disappointed by the touchdown they had at the end of the second quarter because I thought we didn’t have very good discipline that drive. … We have to be a little bit more disciplined with our D-line because, again, we had some of those foolish penalties that extend drives.”
It wasn’t quite the shootout that was expected from two of the most high-octane offenses in the Big Sky – and the FCS as a whole – but things opened up considerably in the second half.
McCoy hit Turon Ivy Jr. for a 52-yard touchdown on a double-reverse pass to get the third quarter started. Bennett responded by hitting Jared Gipson for 11 yards on fourth-and-9 and 31 more yards on the next play, setting up a short touchdown run by Marcus Fulcher.
After the teams traded punts with the score 20-17 Vandals, McCoy let it fly again, dropping the ball right in Terez Traynor’s hands on a go route up the right sideline for a 60-yard score.
It was the first score since 2021 for Traynor, a former all-Big Sky receiver who missed all of last season with an injury.
“Gevani found him a bunch last week on slants and stuff,” Eck said. “I think that was good for him to get his confidence back. He makes us tough to defend because I think we got three receivers who, on another FCS team, would maybe be No. 1 guys.”
Down 27-17 heading to the fourth quarter, Sac State – once again – responded. Bennett led a grinding 13-play, 54-yard drive that included another fourth-down conversion and ended with Zach Schreiner’s 44-yard field goal to make it 27-20.
Idaho looked to be driving for the game-sealing score, but with the Vandals inside Sac State territory, Caleb Nelson punched the ball free from all-Big Sky receiver Hayden Hatten after a catch and Dillon Juniel fell on it for the Hornets.
The drive looked dead in the water when Dallas Afalava sacked Bennett on first down, but the Sac State quarterback converted third-and-17 with a jump ball deep to Anderson Grover, who boxed out the defensive back for a 32-yard gain and got a facemask added to the end of the play to put the ball on the Idaho 14.
Three plays later, Bennett hit Fulcher on a wheel route out of the backfield for a 9-yard score to make it 27-27.
“That’s a really good football team,” Eck said about Sac State. “And they’re not going to lay down just because you get a lead on ‘em, like maybe happened in the Nevada game or something. … I got a lot of respect for that team. Again, I’ve competed against them three years in a row now going back to my last year at South Dakota State, we played them in the playoffs.”
With over four minutes left, it felt like the game had room for a couple more twists and turns, but Jackson’s big return – and the penalty attached to the end of it – put Idaho in an advantageous position and the Vandals managed the clock perfectly to give Chavez a chance to win it.
It was a redemptive kick for the former junior college transfer from Los Angeles, who slipped and missed a potential tying 39-yarder at the very end of Idaho’s 45-42 playoff loss to Southeastern Louisiana last season.
“There’s some people that know what happened last year in the playoffs, and that was something that I took into the offseason,” Chavez said. “That made me work harder and made me the person I am today.”
Chavez’s kick offered Eck and the whole team some redemption as well. Their eye-opening win against Montana last year was on the road. So was their FBS win against Nevada two weeks ago. Before Saturday, Idaho had only had one prior chance for a signature win under the distinctive vaulted roof of the Kibbie Dome – and they got rocked 44-26 by UC Davis in that game to end their home schedule last year.
With only four home games this year, the Vandals had limited chances to wipe away those memories. On Saturday? Mission accomplished.
“It’s clearly our best home win that I think we’ve had in the last two years,” Eck said. “If you’re going to be a great team, you’ve got to defend your home field. It stuck in my craw how we played in our last home game last year because I thought we really didn’t play well. … So it was good to get that wiped away and have a good win like this. Couldn’t have been better.”
