These Bobcats have proven that you don’t have to play well start to finish to roll up big time victories. Staying the course and finding a variety of ways to win have Montana State’s football team as one of the nation’s most consistent winners over the last few years.
Montana State has won 25 of its last 30 games. Two of those losses are to Football Bowl Subdivision teams. Another two are to FCS superpower North Dakota State. And the fifth came to rival Montana, a team that won 10 games in 2021, including beating MSU 29-10 in Missoula on the way to a quarterfinal appearance for the second year in a row.
The other losses during that stretch came to North Dakota State (2019 and 2021), FBS Wyoming (2021) and FBS Oregon State (2022), which is currently 6-2 and ranked in the Top 25.
In other words, Montana State has been tremendous during the last several seasons, particularly since head coach Brent Vigen took over before last season.
The Bobcats are 25-3 against FCS opponents in that span, including 19-2 in the head coach Brent Vigen Era. They’ve won a school record 17 straight home games and are 8-3 on the road. The only place they really struggle is on neutral fields (last year’s national championship game and this season’s Oregon State game played in Portland) where the Bobcats are 0-2.
The Bobcats have played plenty of top teams over the course of those games. They’ve played seven playoff games of which they’re 5-2 with both losses to NDSU. They’ve played 12 ranked opponents and have an 9-3 record in those games.
Of those 12 games against ranked teams, the wins in which MSU has looked good from start to finish have been somewhat rare. The Bobcats took it to Montana (48-14) and Albany (47-21) in 2019. In 2021, top-ranked Sam Houston State was a road quarter-final game victim of a 42-19 drubbing and a week after MSU dispatched UT-Martin 26-7 in a game that was marred by strong gale force winds and saw the Bobcats run for nearly 400 yards.
This season the Bobcats have had to scrape by Eastern Washington (38-35) and hang on for dear life against Weber State (43-38). Their 41-24 win over UC Davis was close until late in the third quarter.
There’s something to that, according to MSU nickelback Ty Okada, who says it has to do with the mind set of his teammates and coaches, regardless of the opponent.
“It’s this mentality — and (head) coach (Brent Vigen) hits on it all the time — of ‘won’t be beat,’” Okada said after the Weber State win. “Some teams have this mentality of ‘can’t be beat,’ and that’s more so arrogant. ‘Won’t be beat’ is, there are going to be things that happen in the game, and we’re going to be able to respond because we refuse to just let things happen. We’re going to come back, we’re going to fight, scratch, claw, do everything in our power so that we won’t be beat.”
That theory was tested and proven in both the EWU and WSU games.
On the road against the Eagles, MSU was poised to take the lead back (there were six lead changes in the game) late in the fourth quarter when the Eagles bowed their necks after the Bobcats got to the EWU eight-yard line trailing 35-31. That 11 play, 72-yard drive ended when Sean Chambers threw an interception in the end zone on fourth down – a play that MSU only had 10 players on the field.
There had been no turnovers to that point and there was only 3:52 to play. MSU needed to get the ball back and soon. The next play after the EWU interception saw MSU defensive tackle Sebastian Valdez grab hold of EWU tailback Micah Smith and as he held Smith up, MSU linebacker Callahan O’Reilly was able to reach out and pull Smith’s arm away from the ball which Okada recovered.
Two plays later Chambers rambled into the end zone to put MSU up for good. The Bobcats would then force the game’s third and last turnover on EWU’s last drive when the ball popped away from wider receiver Nolan Ulm’s hands and right into the lap of linebacker Danny Ulialakepa.
“Coming into the year, we knew, offensively, we could score points,” Vigen said. “We knew the return game could be a factor. We didn’t always have those things last year. We really had to lean on our defense for the greater part of the regular season. When you have that you can win a game 43-38, they don’t have to be 13-7 like last year.
“So, we’re just a better team. Our guys believe and they trust the plan and if another team makes a play that’s part of football and we hang in there and make the next one. We have a really good mindset going right now. I think the pride you have in your coaching staff and a group of players after a win like that is something else.”
Against Weber, MSU saw Tommy Mellott throw his first interception to an FCS team on his first pass of the game to give the Wildcats a field goal. After MSU’s first touchdown put them up 9-3, the Wildcats responded with a 100-yard kickoff return for a score. MSU was forced to punt shortly after, and WSU ran that back 91 yards for another TD and a 17-9 lead.
The Bobcats would fall behind 24-9 and miss a field goal before inexplicably rattling off 34 straight points of their own. Not to be totally outdone the Wildcats got a touchdown and then forced a turnover on downs and scored again to cut the lead to 43-38.
WSU then forced a punt and got the ball back with just over two minutes remaining. MSU was able to get Weber into three fourth down and 10 situations, but only got the ball back on the last one when Weber’s Ty MacPherson dropped what would’ve been a first down reception with just 25 seconds to play.
“When both sides of the ball are doing things, you’ve always got a chance,” Vigen said after the Weber State game. “The floodgates hadn’t opened against our defense. The returns had put some points on the board and our offense had had some success moving the ball.
“The guys understood that there was a lot of football left. Stay in it, believe in each other and find a way to have five more points than them.”
The Bobcats will look to run their Big Sky Conference record to 6-0 and overall mark to 8-1 November 5th in Flagstaff, Ariz. where they take on the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks.
