Heading into Saturday night’s match-up against Cal Poly, Montana head coach Bob Stitt said he was worried about the Mustangs’ potent triple-option offense, an attack that chews up yards and clock with its deliberate style.
Under the Washington-Grizzly Stadium lights, Stitt’s fears came true. Cal Poly came out of the halftime locker room with the scored tied 14-14 and possessed the ball for more than 12 and a half minutes in the third quarter to enter the final frame up 17-14. The second half began with a 17-play drive that lasted almost seven minutes. Cal Poly would mount three more drives of at least 10 plays, including an 11-play drive that ended with a game-winning 49-yard Alex Vega field goal with four seconds left to lift Cal Poly to a 19-17 win.
Cal Poly ran 52 plays after halftime, including 45 rushes for 144 yards as the Mustangs possessed the ball for more than 20 of the 30 second-half minutes. Cal Poly’s ability to possess the football kept Montana’s up-tempo offense at bay. The Grizzlies ran 58 plays before halftime and just 34 plays after halftime. Montana achieved just six second-half first downs and scored just three second-half points.
“We never got any flow,” said Stitt, who fell to 1-1 in his first year coaching Montana. “It was an eight-minute drive coming out of halftime and we went three and out and they had the ball again. We didn’t do ourselves any favors because we had 58 plays at halftime. If we come out and have any type of success early in the third quarter, we are going to be in good shape.”
Montana held Cal Poly to 3.2 yards per carry after halftime but the Mustangs still managed to gain 330 yards on the ground on 76 bruising carries all told. Cal Poly senior quarterback Chris Brown rushed for 130 yards, including a 60-yard touchdown in the first quarter, and sophomore fullback Joe Protheroe pounded out 29 physical carries for 112 yards as CP possessed the ball for nearly 36 minutes.
“It was just a war,” UM captain defensive end Derek Crittenden said. “Nose down and grind. Everyone does their 1/11th. I liked our game plan going into it. We gave ourselves a chance to win and we didn’t. It was a fun game. It was a long game. It hurts to be on this end of it.”
Derek Crittenden
Crittenden was among a group of Grizzly defensive standouts who limited a Mustangs’ squad who rushed for 421 yards and scored 41 points in a win in San Luis Obisopo over UM last season. Crittenden was one of a few Griz defensive linemen who emerged from Cal Poly’s cut blocking, smashing blocking style unscathed.
“We had a totally different game plan on the back end,” Crittenden said. “We had our opportunities to win and we didn’t execute.”
Junior defensive tackle Zach Peevey suffered an ankle injury that cost him the second half. Senior defensive tackle Jamal Wilson suffered an unknown injury that cost him the final 12 minutes of the game. With junior defensive tackle Caleb Kidder on the shelf after emergency surgery to relieve compartment syndrome, Montana was down to sophomore Nate Bradley, a 5-foot-10, 260-pounder and true freshman Kyle Davis on the interior defensively. Bradley, a walk-on from Billings West, notched 14 tackles.
“Some of the guys we had in there didn’t take any reps this week,” Crittenden said. “They were in there playing scout team reps. They didn’t know anything about the scheme. Peevey went down, Jamal was hurt and Kidder was out so we had to go deep into our 3-deep.”
Senior linebacker Kendrick Van Ackeren notched 20 tackles and blocked a kick. Senior linebacker Jeremiah Kose finished with 14 tackles. Van Ackeren was nearly flawless in his play, blowing up dives, chasing down pitches and spilling blocks for the duration. But the one play he missed his assignment was a play in which wing back Kori Garcia went in motion, cut back and was used as a lead blocker for Brown on his long touchdown run.
“We made too many mistakes,” Van Ackeren said. “We got on the wrong fit, had bad eyes. We needed to do the right things and we didn’t.”
Crittenden finished with 12 tackles, including a tackle for loss in the end-zone for a safety to give UM a 19-17 lead. In his first Griz start, Arizona transfer Yamen Sanders notched 10 tackles. Wilson and senior defensive end Tyrone Holmes each had 10 tackles and a sack for a Montana defense that limited Cal Poly to 18 points and 100 yards less than its season averages from a year ago.
“I tell the offense every week that it’s our job to score more than the defense gives up,” Stitt said. “They score 20, we should’ve scored 21. We had the opportunity to do that. We should’ve gotten points on that first drive early in the first quarter. We need to get a field goal at least in the red zone. We let the defense down.”
Despite fourth quarter interceptions on back-to-back drive by Gustafson, the Griz still had a chance to win late thanks to their stout defensive performance. Montana had the ball at the Cal Poly 32 with a fourth down and 1:20 left on the clock. Stitt inserted a package that included Holmes and sophomore defensive end Mike Ralston, a converted tight end, playing tight end. The package also included Kose and Wilson in at fullback behind Gustafson and senior linebacker Herbert Gamboa at tailback.
With the play clock winding down, Montana rushed to the line. Sophomore center Robert Luke snapped the ball early and Montana was called for a false start. Even if the play would’ve been live, Gamboa was stopped short of the first. The Mustangs declined the penalty, giving Cal Poly one last chance.
Brady Gustafson
“We were going Iso (dive) to the field (wide side of the field) and I didn’t do a good job of getting our guys set,” UM quarterback Brady Gustafson said after throwing for 353 yards and three interceptions in his second career start. “I shot our team in the foot from that point on.”
Cal Poly took over and began running pitch options from Brown to Garcia to gain yards and get out of bounds. Brown hit Roland Jackson, who caught a 36-yard touchdown in the first half, for 11 yards on the first third down of the drive and Jordan Hines for six on the second. On the ensuing fourth down following Hines’ reception, Brown got the two yards he needed. Garcia gained 10 yards on his next two carries to get down to the UM 32 to set up Vega’s game-winner.
“This past four to five years, I’ve watched the guys ahead of me like Andre Broadus and knowing the two minute drill would come in handy when it’s time for a big game,” Brown said. “We had times like that last year in the season that killed us. That was something I wanted to work on was managing the clock and listening to the coach and trusting whatever was called and staying true to my reads. The guys came through strong. The o-line, they held up.”
Entering the 2015 season, Cal Poly knew its offense would be flush with the return of Brown and Garcia behind an offensive line that returns in tact. The questions centered on a defense that lost All-America linebackers Nick Dzubnar and Cameron Ontko along with captain defensive end Chris Lawrence and both starting safeties.
On Saturday, junior defensive end Kelly Shepard, junior strongside linebacker Joey Gigantio, junior safety B.J. Nard and sophomore safety Kevin Griffin made their first college starts. Gigantino finished with nine tackles, two tackles for loss and a fumble recovery. Sheperd notched six tackles and a tackle for loss. Griffin had six tackles. Nard finished with six tackles and three interceptions.
“We tell our players all the time, we buy the car and they drive it and we let them drive it and they drove it pretty darn good,” Cal Poly head coach Tim Walsh said. “We gave them a plan and the execution looked extremely good by our defense. I thought we looked extremely fast on defense. That’s what we preached. We are not the biggest by any stretch of the imagination but we play fast and we play hard.”
Photo by Brooks Nuanez. All Rights Reserved.
