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GAME PREVIEW: Griz host surging Aggies in crucial tilt

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Backs against the wall, the Montana Grizzlies will play the best team they’ve faced this season Saturday, hosting No. 6 UC Davis.

Back-to-back losses have put Montana (4-3, 2-2) in a precarious position, and a loss Saturday would leave the Griz needing to win out just to stay on the playoff bubble.

But an upset win over Davis (6-1, 4-0) would likely vault Montana back into the top 25 and put their playoff destiny back in their own hands.

“I’d rather be 7-0, but I wouldn’t want to be 0-7,” Montana head coach Bobby Hauck said. “So, we’re kind of where we are. Certainly we’ve got a bad taste in our mouth from some of our performances. … Winning’s hard. Losing’s easy, all you have to do is cave in, and we felt like, team-wide, I believe the feeling is that we’ve let a couple of potential wins slip from our grasp, and we’re a little disgusted by that, I hope.”

The game will also match up two of the highest-profile coaches in the conference, as Hauck takes on former Boise State and Colorado head coach Dan Hawkins, now the head man at his alma mater.

There are some things pointing in Montana’s favor this week.

Portland State kicker Cody Williams (57) celebrates his game-winning field goal to beat Montana in Missoula/ by Jason Bacaj

First, they’re back at Washington-Grizzly Stadium. For all the recent calamity surrounding the team, their home-field advantage is one of the best in the country, and they would still be undefeated in Missoula this season if not for a last-second, 52-yard field goal by Portland State freshman Cody Williams.

Second, the Griz are coming off their bye week, which gave them a chance to rest and recover.

“It’s good to catch up on school and stuff like that, mentally,” linebacker Dante Olson said. “It’s obviously a mental grind too, going through the season. Physically, it’s good to have a few days off and recover a little bit. Football’s a violent game.”

It’s good that some of the off-field factors are pointing Montana’s way, because talent-wise, UC Davis looks like the best team the Griz play all season.

The Aggies beat FBS team San Jose State in their opener, with junior quarterback Jake Maier throwing for 446 yards, including 352 in the first half.

Neither he nor his team has slowed down since. Davis’s only loss is to FBS top-10 team Stanford. They came back from 16 points down to beat Big Sky upstart Idaho State in an overtime thriller two weeks before blowing out Cal Poly last week to remain the only undefeated team in Big Sky Conference play and rise to a program-high No. 6 in the FCS STATS poll.

Maier, as the triggerman of the top offense in the conference, is leading the Big Sky in just about every relevant passing category. His weapons include: senior Keelan Doss, a returning unanimous All-American who leads the conference in catches; sophomore Jared Harrell, who’s nearly matched Doss with 490 receiving yards in seven games; and running backs Ulonzo Gilliam, who is rushing for nearly 110 yards per game as a redshirt freshman, and sophomore Tehran Thomas, who is averaging 6.9 yards per carry.

It’s all added up to an offense whose lowest point total this season, except for that Stanford game, is 44 points. Already, the Aggies have more wins in a season than they’ve ever had since they moved to the Big Sky Conference in 2012.

“It’s super fun and gratifying,” Hawkins said. “You have to have players, and [former coach] Ron Gould recruited a lot of great kids and really great players in here. … Jake is just unbelievable, he really is. For everything you see of him as a player, he’s a great person.”

To counter, the Grizzlies will have to at least slow down that attack, plus hope the good Dalton Sneed shows up to help the Montana offense keep pace.

UC Davis quarterback Jake Maier (15) throws a pass against San Diego State last season/ AP

Although the fumbling epidemic that has hit Montana has largely been the work of other players, Sneed has cratered in the last two weeks, completing just 35-of-66 passes for 322 yards and running 14 times for 26 total yards in the losses to Portland State and North Dakota.

“We’ve put our defense in too many bad positions with turning the ball over and keeping them on the field too long,” Sneed said. “So, when a defense is playing that many plays, it’s extremely hard for them. So when we’re playing a good offense like UC Davis, we need to control the game on offense and put drives together and give our offense a break.”

The Aggies could be a good matchup in that regard. Although they’re third in the conference in scoring defense, opposing teams have thrown for 275 yards per game against them, which is third-worst in the conference.

The question, as always for Montana this year, is if Sneed and his receivers will get enough time. The Aggies counter their weak secondary with an aggressive front seven.

Seventeen UC Davis players have at least one tackle for loss this year, and they have 52 total in seven games. Linebacker Mason Moe leads the effort with 10 tackles for loss and five sacks.

Hauck and the players were quick to insist that they’re still taking everything one game at a time, but with their season potentially on the line Saturday, the effort should be there for Montana, no matter how bad the match-ups may look.

“I think we’re fresh, and we’ve got a month left to our season, and we’ve got to roll,” Hauck said.

Photos by Brooks Nuanez, Jason Bacaj and attributed. All Rights Reserved.

 

About Andrew Houghton

Andrew Houghton grew up in Washington, DC. He graduated from the University of Montana journalism school in December 2015 and spent time working on the sports desk at the Daily Tribune News in Cartersville, Georgia, before moving back to Missoula and becoming a part of Skyline Sports in early 2018.

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