The stretch run of the college football season is upon every team in college football. As each team dives into their own final push, the focus intensifies for those with high aspirations as collision courses with their ultimate foes or ability to just get a win on the board leaves little room for distractions.
In Montana State’s case, the teams that remain all form of a bump in the road for the Bobcats. This week’s opponent, Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo, once held a spell over the Bobcats dating back to before the Mustangs were in the league as they beat MSU eight straight times from 1996 to 2014. Northern Colorado is a problem for most Big Sky teams at home and they’ve handed MSU unexpected losses and near losses over the years in Greeley. Weber State was a league frontrunner from the mid-2010’s until just a few years ago. UC Davis has risen to near the top of the BSC in the past two years and nearly pulled off an unthinkable win after trailing 30-7 in the fourth quarter only to see a two-point conversion attempt intercepted in a 30-28 classic.
Then there’s the Montana Grizzlies, which nearly spoiled MSU’s 2021 run to the FCS title game and took away MSU’s chance at a league title in 2023. Beyond that, most MSU and many national FCS fans have been keeping an eye on North Dakota State, which has defeated MSU four straight times in the FCS playoffs and South Dakota State, which has won five of the last six against the Bobcats.
MSU offensive guard Titan Fleischmann is undaunted by all that history as the Bobcats take aim at their last five regular season games.
“I’m fired up for every opportunity that we get,” Fleischmann said. “Football is an interesting game of limited opportunities. We train all year for 12 games guaranteed. If you’re not laser focused at the tail end of the season – we only have five opportunities left – then you shouldn’t be playing football at this time. That’s my personal opinion. Every single dude on this team is locked in right now. It’s fun to see. We just had a really good practice today coming off the bye and being able to see that focus and desire still be here after a week of not as much football activity was very refreshing to see.”
Fleishmann definitely has not lost focus on the job at hand as he sees the upcoming game against Cal Poly – a team that has struggled the last few seasons – as just as important and challenging as any other on the schedule. The Bobcats absolutely annihilated the Mustangs back in 2022 with a 72-28 win that saw MSU rush for a school record 554 yards as part of a 744-yard total offense day.
“First things first, they are a good team,” Fleischmann said. “Cal Poly is a good team and every team in this conference is a good team. There’s no slouch in this conference. I think every single team we play is going to be real good.
“Last time we played them was in (2022), but not even remotely close to the same team. Their defense can play fast, play hard. Their motors are pretty good; they don’t ever stop playing ball.”
The MSU offense has had to deal with a lot of surprises from opposing defenses and while Fleischmann & co. know a few things about the Cal Poly defense, he knows that anything is possible once the game starts.
“It’s hard to say because there’s a lot of times when we prep for a team and they come out and do something completely different,” Fleischmann said. “I’ve got an idea of what they’re going to do because their defense is sound, and they do a great job. With that said, we’ve seen a lot of different looks, Eastern (Washington) did some different stuff, San Diego did different things, Idaho State did some different stuff. We haven’t seen anything quite like (Cal Poly) but we’ll be prepared based on all the stuff that we have seen. We’ve seen a whole different array of defense from teams this season.
“In the Big Sky all the teams are good teams, so they’re able to do stuff like that (change defenses). Just being able to be prepared and remembering like you do for a module for school, like you learn something for one week and then you don’t necessarily (need) it the next week but you gotta be ready for it for the test. We learn something different every week, so we gotta be ready for each Saturday because Saturday’s the test. So, it might show back up on the test.”
It would seem cliché for Brent Vigen to constantly talk about focus and steady consistency if it wasn’t the hallmark of Vigen’s teams thus far at Montana State. That continues to be true this year as MSU has steadily improved throughout the campaign.
“Focus is certainly one of our key works, key themes is focus and let’s put intense focus in front of that,” Vigen said. “We have to be reminded up of that on a daily basis. We have to be locked in, whether that’s in the meeting room, the weight room, being dialed in on the practice field. To show up on game day and think you are going to be the most focused version of yourself, it doesn’t work that way.”
Montana State will have its focus tested with just its third road game of the season on Saturday in San Luis, Obispo against Cal Poly.
