By CHRIS WALTERSKIRCHEN
For the first time in their football history the MSU Bobcats have now won play-off games in consecutive season, having defeated New Hampshire in Bozeman last year. The first time the Montana Grizzlies won post-season games in consecutive years was 1994-95.
A win Friday night over Sam Houston State and the 2012 Cats will have tied the school record for wins in a season with 12 (a number MSU achieved in their national title seasons of 1976 and 1984).
When Rob Ash arrived in Bozeman in the summer of 2007 to accumulate the previous 100 wins in Bobcats history you had to go back to September of 1985. With their win Saturday over Stony Brook the Cats need only to go back to September of 1998 to accumulate their previous 100 wins.
In each of the FCS quarterfinal games this weekend the match-up will feature one school who has won a national title against a school yet to win an FCS Crown. Quarterfinal hosts Montana state North Dakota state and Eastern Washington are previous title winners, while Georgia Southern has won 6 titles but will be at Old Dominion on Saturday.
Six of the 8 schools in the national quarterfinals have made at least one appearance in Washington Grizzly stadium with Old Dominion and Illinois State the only two not to have played in Missoula.
University of Montana Grizzly basketball assistant Kerry Rupp received quite a compliment from a basketball legend. In one of his final interviews before he passed away, Rick Majerus talked of some of the college coaches that most impressed him and Rupp was one of the 5 listed by Majerus. In 1987 Majerus interviewed for the vacant Nevada heading coaching position before taking the head coaching position at Bowling Green.
When you hear the reference to coach Petrino you usually think of a football coach. Thursday night Helena native Mike Petrino will be in Dahlberg Arena as an assistant for the University of Wyoming women’s basketball team. Petrino was a highly successful high School coach in Portland before moving to the college ranks this past summer. Mike Petrino is married to former Hellgate all-around sports star Kelly Hays.
An Ironic twist relating to former Griz assistant Dave Doeren’s move from North Illinois to North Carolina State. Doeren’s NIU Huskies stunned the college football world with an invite to the Orange Bowl to face Florida State. Ironically Florida State’s only conference loss this season was to North Carolina State. Doeren will now take over preparing NC State for the Music City Bowl in Nashville while they will face Vanderbilt.
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Chris Walterskirchen has been an observer of Montana sports for nearly half a century. A Kalispell native, Chris has worked in various capacities for professional and college sports organization of at various times: ranging from announcing and statistical work to the concessions and even a stint as a costumed mascot.
Chris has academic degrees in communications and elementary education. His style of sports trivia involves more than just who won and who lost, but also focuses on the obscure or human side of sports. In this blog you will learn things like the Grizzly football team has won 210 games over the 19 seasons since they have had Monte as their mascot or that UNLV is the only school that both the Griz and Lady Griz have both faced in the NCAA basketball tournament
When not following sports Chris enjoys taking care of animals of all kinds (a peacock rescue?) and reading to pre-schoolers.