Three seasons into Bobby Hauck’s second tenure as head coach at Montana, the Grizzlies have accomplished plenty of what they set out to do when Hauck returned to Missoula with a simple, catchy description of the program’s goals going forward – “Return to Dominance.”
In Hauck’s second year, the Griz made it back to the national quarterfinals for the first time since the later-vacated 2011 season.
This year, they’ve gone several steps farther, recording a historic FBS upset of Washington, sitting in the top 10 of the national rankings for most of the season and routing Montana State to snap a four-game losing streak against the Bobcats.
Aside from the on-field results, Hauck has built a team that wins with scads of players from Montana and a ferocious defense – both hallmarks of the Grizzlies’ dominant run in the 2000s.
In Hauck’s previous tenure, Montana was a consistent contender at the top levels of the FCS, going to the championship game in 2004 and 2008 and the semifinals in 2006.
To get back to that level, which might be deemed the final step in the return to dominance, the Griz will have to beat James Madison in the national quarterfinals Friday in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
The Dukes are where Montana was a decade ago and where the Grizzlies want to get back to now. In the last five seasons, JMU has made it to the semifinals four times and the national championship game twice, winning one of those. This year, the Dukes are 11-1, with the only loss a 28-27 squeaker against Villanova in which their All-American kicker Ethan Ratke missed two short fourth-quarter field goals.
James Madison is what dominance looks like. The Dukes have what Montana wants. The Grizzlies will have a chance to take it on Friday
QUICK HITS
Nickname: Dukes. The teams are named after the university’s second president, Samuel Duke, and represented by a bulldog mascot.
Location: Harrisonburg, Virginia, two-and-a-half hours west of Washington, DC.
Founded: 1908
Enrollment: 21,496
Stadium: Bridgeforth Stadium holds 24,877, making it the largest stadium in the Colonial Athletic Association. It was opened in 1975 and expanded to its current capacity in 2011.
Famous alumni: Charles Haley, NFL Hall of Famer; Jim Acosta, TV reporter; Scott Norwood, cursed kicker.
THE TEAM
THE COACH
Curt Cignetti (third season at James Madison, 32-4, 99-30 overall record)
James Madison hired Cignetti away from CAA rival Elon after he took the Phoenix, who had been 2-9 the year before he arrived, to a combined 14 wins and two playoff appearances in two years as head coach.
Cignetti’s success has continued at James Madison, where he’s lost just four games in three seasons and taken the Dukes to the national championship game, the semifinals and now back to the quarterfinals.
Cignetti played quarterback at West Virginia from 1979 to 1982, and started off his coaching career as a QBs coach, holding that role at Davidson, Rice, Temple, Pitt and then NC State. A seven-year stretch with the Wolfpack, where he was also the recruiting coordinator and tight ends coach, got Cignetti hired on Nick Saban’s first staff at Alabama in 2007. Cignetti won a national championship with the Crimson Tide in 2009 and, as recruiting coordinator (he also served as tight ends coach) helped lay the groundwork for ‘Bama’s world-conquering recruiting under Saban.
That got him his first head coaching job at D-II Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where he went 53-17 and put the Crimson Hawks in the top 25 of the year-end D-II rankings four times in seven years before moving to Elon.
THE OFFENSE – PLAYERS TO WATCH
QB Cole Johnson, 6-5, 215, RS Sr.
The Griz evened their record against Eastern Washington’s Eric Barriere last week to advance to the quarterfinals. Their reward is a matchup against one of the very few quarterbacks in the country who is in Barriere’s class.
Johnson, a redshirt senior from Virginia Beach, was named the CAA’s Offensive Player of the Year and finshed fourth in Walter Payton Award voting. It’s only his second season starting for the Dukes, as he backed up first Brian Schor and then current Dallas Cowboy Ben DiNucci before taking over the starting job in the spring of 2021.
The lanky passer doesn’t have quite the eye-popping yardage totals of Barriere, but he’s been remarkably conscientious with the ball, throwing just two interceptions all year against 37 touchdowns.
Johnson has been slightly less efficient lately, with all four of his games completing under 60% of his passes coming in the Dukes’ last six outings. He’s also thrown for over 300 yards in four of those six games, including 321 against Southeastern Louisiana last weekend in the second round.
He’s also JMU’s second-leading rusher with 228 yards and a team-high six touchdowns on 68 carries.
RB Latrele Palmer, 6-0, 220, RS So.
Palmer received first-team all-conference recognition in the WCAC, maybe the toughest high school sports league in the country, as both a junior and a senior while playing for Good Counsel High School in Olney, Maryland.
He took that success to JMU, where he had 400 yards rushing in nine games as a freshman in 2019.
With All-American Percy Agyei-Obese playing in just four games in the fall, Palmer has been the Dukes’ leading rusher with 691 yards on 151 carries. Both numbers are more than double anyone else on the team.
WR Antwane Wells Jr., 6-1, 204, RS Fr.
Wells has only been on campus for about two years, but he’s already fourth in school history in receiving touchdowns with 20, just five behind Macey Brooks’ career record. That’s because Wells has kept up a score-a-game pace since breaking into the lineup in the spring – six TDs in eight games in the spring season, 14 in 12 so far in the fall. That includes three apiece in each of the Dukes’ last two games, against Towson and Southeastern Louisiana.
Wells, from Richmond, isn’t exactly a big-play burner – he has just one catch of longer than 50 yards this season – but he is incredibly consistent. He has at least six catches in eight out of 12 games this season, and at least 100 yards in six, including four of JMU’s last five.
Altogether, he has 73 catches for 1,117 yards, and was named first-team all-CAA.
WR Kris Thornton, 5-8, 180, RS Jr.
Montana finally showed an ability to move its cornerbacks from side-to-side late in the season, having Justin Ford shadow Montana State’s Lance McCutcheon in the Grizzlies’ blowout win over Montana State.
If the Griz try doing that to slow down Wells, they’ll be in trouble. Thornton nearly matched his younger counterpart with 71 catches for 968 yards and 12 touchdowns, and was also named first-team all-conference.
The redshirt junior from Manassas, Virginia, transferred to James Madison from the Virginia Military Institute after the 2018 season, when he set a VMI single-season record with 87 catches.
After sitting out for two years because of NCAA transfer rules and COVID, he stepped right into the Dukes’ lineup in the 2021 spring season with 428 yards, three touchdowns and a first-team all-CAA nod.
THE DEFENSE – PLAYERS TO WATCH
LB Diamonte Tucker-Dorsey, 5-10, 214, RS Jr.
Tucker-Dorsey, from Norfolk, Virginia, has played in 48 of a possible 49 games for JMU since his redshirt year in 2017.
He was second-team all-CAA in the spring and moved up to the first team in the fall, ample recognition for one of the best stat-sheet-stuffing linebackers in the country.
Tucker-Dorsey leads James Madison with 94 tackles, and has added two sacks, seven tackles for loss, four interceptions, three pass breakups and two forced fumbles.
He had eight tackles, a sack and two interceptions last week against Southeastern Louisiana in the second round.
DL Bryce Carter, 6-1, 252, RS Sr.
DL Isaac Ukwu, 6-3, 255, RS Jr.
Carter and Ukwu have nearly identical stats as the bookend D-linemen for James Madison, and both can be disruptive. Carter, from Steelton, Pennsylvania, transferred from Towson to JMU as a grad transfer before the 2021 season, and has seven sacks and 16.5 tackles.
Ukwu, from Upper Marlboro, Maryland, missed both the 2019 and spring 2021 seasons with injuries, meaning before this year he’d played in just three games for the Dukes despite getting to campus in 2017. He’s broken out with a team-high nine sacks and 16 tackles for loss.
CB Greg Ross, 6-1, 186, RS Sr.
Ross went from his hometown of Temple Hills, Maryland, to North Carolina, where he played in 24 games and started 11 in four years for the Tar Heels. He grad transferred to James Madison and started five of seven games in the 2021 spring season. After getting established, he’s starred for the Dukes in the fall, being named first-team all-CAA.
Ross is a ballhawk, with a co-team-high four interceptions and nine other pass breakups, twice as many as anyone else on JMU. Opposing teams noticed and kept the ball away from him – he has just 26 tackles in 12 games.
