The stage is set as the collision course commences.
And for the fifth year in a row, the clash between Treasure State rivals will be for at least a share of the Big Sky Conference championship.
Saturday afternoon, No. 2 Montana went on a torrid run in the City of Roses to dispatch of Portland State after trailing by a touchdown in the first few minutes of the game. UM’s surge amounted to a 63-3 run during a 63-17 win over the Vikings to move to 11-0 for the fourth time in school history.
Saturday evening, No. 3 Montana State played a “Big Sky After Dark” contest on national television against No. 9 UC Davis. After falling behind 7-0, MSU clamped down, using an array of turnovers, including a Caden Dowler pick-6, to built a 24-7 lead on the way to a 38-17 win.
Following an 0-2 start to 2025, Montana State has now won nine games in a row. Like Montana, the Bobcats enter the 124thrivalry showdown with a 7-0 conference mark.
The result at Bobcat Stadium means UC Davis is 5-2 in league play and is out of conference title contention. The Aggies host rival Sacramento State for the 72nd annual Causeway Classic next week. The Hornets moved to 7-4 with a 23-20 victory over Idaho that was not without controversy. Davis is 7-3 with the loss at MSU, meaning next weekend’s Causeway is essentially for an FCS Playoff spot.
Montana used an electrifying offense led by a trio of offensive skill stars to finish October without a blemish. Quarterback Keali’i Ah Yat entered this month as the leader in the FCS in passing yards per game, but has cooled off a bit since his sizzling start. Still, Montana has scored more than 40 points in seven games so far this season and leads the Big Sky Conference in scoring (42.2 points per game).
Junior running back Eli Gillman and senior wide receiver/returner Michael Wortham are among the leading candidates for BSC Offensive Player of the Year. Gillman has scored 16 rushing touchdowns & 18 total touchdowns to bring his career total to 48 trips to the end-zone. Wortham has scored in a variety of ways and leads the country in all-purpose yards (155.4) per contest to go with 12 total touchdowns plus a passing TD to boot.
Ah Yat, who’s thrown for a Big Sky-best 2,968 yards and 24 touchdowns, has proven to be clutch, leading UM to come from behind wins over North Dakota, Idaho State and Cal Poly. The second half of the season, quick starts have been the norm as Ah Yat has helped Montana jump out to 22-0 leads against Sacred Heart and Eastern Washington plus a 28-3 lead over Weber State.
It’s all amounted to the 4th 11-0 start in Montana’s proud and prestigious program’s history, including the third under 14th-year head coach Bobby Hauck despite the fact that the Griz returned zero full-time starters defensively from a season ago. A win on Saturday against the Bobcats would give Montana its 20th Big Sky title, including its ninth under Hauck.
“By the time we get to this point in the season, generally speaking, we have structure, detail and we develop mature, competitive guys and they actually accept coaching,” Hauck said after moving to 14-0 in the week before the rivalry game in his career. “If you have a bad team, they don’t want to listen. These guys, they believe, not in me, but in their coaches and they listen and I think that’s probably why we are 14-0 by a wide margin (26 points per contest) the week before the rivalry.”
For Montana State, last season’s national championship game loss into this season’s losses at Oregon and at home in double overtime to then-No. 2 South Dakota State have caused for the Bobcats lurk in the shadows until the last few weeks. While Montana has received plenty of hype for its undefeated run and its favorable schedule — Saturday will mark UM’s regular-season record eighth home game — MSU has been chipping away trying to overcome an 0-2 start. But in the process, Montana State has exerted dominance that few expected following the graduation of the most decorated senior class in school history.
Following Saturday’s ranked win, the Bobcats are on the brink of its third Big Sky title in the last four seasons and the 18th in their program’s rich history. Montana State has used a lights out defense that has not allowed a single point in the third quarter to any opponent other than Oregon and comes into the rivalry leading the conference in total defense (308 yards per game) and scoring defense (16.2 points per game allowed).
MSU has beaten down conference opponents, winning by an average score of 47.4 to 11.7 in its seven conference wins. Montana State has won games by 54, 52 and 48 over the last seven weeks, marking three of the four largest margins of victory over Big Sky opponents in MSU’s history in the league, a stretch that dates back to 1963.
The Bobcat defense is spearheaded by a collection of Montana-made players with great pride in both wearing blue & gold and in representing the Treasure State. Defensive tackle Paul Brott from Billings and defensive end Kenneth Eiden IV are lineage Bobcats serving as captains during their senior seasons. Caden Dowler, like Brott a Billings West alum and a team captain, is a leading candidate for Big Sky Defensive Player of the Year. And inside linebacker Cole Taylor is the latest great player to come out of Great Falls CMR.
That defense will certainty be put to the test against Montana’s explosive and diverse offensive attack. But the majority of the unit has been through rivalry battles before.
On offense, MSU also has players who have been through wars with the Griz like Taco Dowler, Caden’s electrifying twin brother who’s one of the most popular and dangerous players in the state. And players like Missoula native Adam Jones, who rushed for 200 yards against the team he grew up rooting for last season during his breakout freshman season.
But neither Ah Yat nor Montana State junior quarterback Justin Lamson have been through the rigors of the rivalry. And Lamson could be the X-factor, because at least Ah Yat has been on the Griz roster the last two seasons and his father, Brian, was a Griz great, so he is perfectly aware of the stakes. Lamson, a transfer from Stanford who’s thorwn for 2,170 yards and 19 touchdowns in his first Bobcat season, has been in Montana for less than a year.
“They say it’s super hostile and that’s something I gotta understand,” said Lamson, who has thrown 16 touchdowns and no interceptions during conference play. “I gotta respect that at the end of the day Missoula’s a tough place to play in but we’re not going to…we’re going to treat it like it’s the biggest game of the year, which it is. Regardless of our record the stakes are even higher: a Big Sky championship. (Teammates) have told me but I think we’re up for it and our guys are looking forward to this week.”
Not only is a Big Sky title on the line for the fifth year in a row but it’s almost certain that the winner of this year’s rivalry game will sew up a top-two seed in the FCS playoffs and the homefield advantage until the national championship that comes with it. That’s important because it likely means not having to go to Fargo, where North Dakota State hast lost a total of one playoff game since its reign over the FCS began in 2011.
It’s also important because Montana has won one true road playoff game among its 41 playoff wins, although most Griz followers that UM’s 1995 win over Marshall in Huntington, West Virginia was a road victory to secure the first national championship in school history since it was played at Marshall’s home stadium.
Montana State has 17 FCS playoff wins along with three postseason wins claimed on the way to the 1976 Division II national title. Only the 1976 semifinal 10-3 win over North Dakota State in the Grantland Rice Bowl and MSU’s 42-19 win over No. 1 Sam Houston in 2021 came outside of Bobcat Stadium.
Bragging rights, a Big Sky title and playoff positioning will certainly dominate the narrative this week. But the battle of head coaches and what it means for each Hauck and Vigen’s respective legacies is also important to note.
Hauck went 5-2 against the rival in his first stint coaching Montana from 2003 until 2009, including winning four in a row before heading to Sin City to coach at UNLV from 2010 until 2015. Since his return, Hauck is 2-4 against the Bobcats, a key part to Montana State winning six of the last eight rivalry games. But Hauck and the Griz have won in blowout fashion each of the last two times MSU has come to Missoula.
Hauck broke former Northern Arizona head coach Jerome Souers’ record for career wins in Big Sky play against Portland State. His next win will be his 150th at Montana and could help secure the third undefeated regular-season under his tutelage.
“We feel like we are playing for a Big Sky championship every week, so it’s just another one on the stack,” Hauck said.
Those Griz beatdowns in Missoula are the lone smudge on Vigen’s otherwise spotless resume, other than Montana State’s almost-yearly playoff losses to North Dakota State. But the Bison beat pretty much everyone, pretty much all the time while Vigen’s predecessors won in Missoula on occasion.
Mike Kramer was 3-4 against Montana, winning in Missoula in 2002 to snap MSU’s 16-game losing streak to the Griz. Rob Ash was just 2-7 against Montana but he won at Washington-Grizzly Stadium in 2010 and 2012. Jeff Choate never lost to Montana, beating the Griz in Missoula in 2016 and 2018 in two of the biggest upsets in the rivalry’s history.
Now comes Vigen’s opportunity. His teams have looked sharp in basically every game he’s led the Bobcats into, including in a 55-21 win over UM in Bozeman in 2022 and in last season’s 34-11 win that helped Montana State cap the first undefeated regular season in school history on its home field. But the only two embarrassing losses of Vigen’s Bobcat career came when Montana boat-raced the Bobcats 29-10 in 2021, ironically sparking MSU to its first of two runs to the national title game since 2021; and in 2023 when Montana clinched its first Big Sky title since 2009 by dancing all over the Bobcats in a 37-7 victory.
After speaking for 12 minutes about his team’s win over UC Davis, Vigen fielded just one question about the rivalry. His stoic demeanor instantly turned stern, the ramifications of the task at hand instantly washing over him.
“We’ve done this now five years in a row,” Montana State Vigen said of playing UM with the league title on the line. “To have everything on the line in the last game; what we need to make it about is playing a game. That’s going to be complicated. Positioning ourselves at this point, it’s where we want to be. Obviously, they haven’t lost yet this year so we’re going to dive deep into doing everything we can to defend them, to find ways to score and combat everything a rivalry is about. Really looking forward to it and just thankful we’re in this position.”
