By CHRIS WALTERSKIRCHEN
It seems only right that the Eastern Washington–Montana showdown would take place on the Anniversary of the Shootout at the OK Corral (132 years ago). The Eagles and Grizzlies have combined to have reached the FCS Semi-Finals each of the past 7 seasons. The home team has won each of the last 4 seasons in this rivalry.
The Eagles won 3 times in Missoula between 1981-92, but have won just twice in their last 9 visits to Missoula.
In the 40 years of NCAA play-offs 7 member schools have won national titles, but EWU’s Beau Baldwin is the only one of those 7 head coaches that still heads a program three seasons after winning a title. Eastern claimed the 2010 title in a dramatic win over Delaware the first year the title game was played in Frisco Texas.
With their win last Saturday over Cal Poly the Grizzlies have now won exactly 100 games since the start of the 2004. In other words that’s 100 wins since “Friends” went off the air and since Ogren Park at Allegiance opened as the home of the Missoula Osprey.
A win Saturday would mark the 24th time in the last 26 seasons that the Grizzlies have won at least 7 games in a season, prior to 1988 the Griz had reached 7 wins just 6 times in the history of the program.
On the opening weekend of the 2013 college football season7 FBS schools lost to FCS teams, most notable was North Dakota State’s win at Kansas State. Of the 7 “major” college teams to lose that Saturday only one has bounced back into the national polls, Oregon State who lost a thriller to the Eastern Washington Eagles.
When the St. Louis Cardinals and Boston Red Sox last faced each other in the World Series each franchise was starving for a World Series title, for the Red Sox it had been 86 years for the Cards it had been a 22 year wait. As the teams meet again they are both “flushed” in World Series rings. For the first time since 1963 both World Series teams have won multiple World Series titles in the previous decade. In 1963 the Dodgers and Yankees had combined to win 7 of the 10 World Series, this year both the Red Sox and Cardinals have won a pair of World Titles since 2004.
The last three times the Cardinals have won a World Series they have clinched the crown at home (1982, 2006 and 2011), but both of the Red Sox World Series clinchers came on the road (St Louis in 2004 and Colorado in 2007).
Boston Red Sox pitcher Ryan Dempster came to the major Leagues in 1998 with the Florida Marlins who were reigning World Series champs but had traded or sold off most of the key players during the winter. Dempster has pitched in the play-offs just twice in his career with the Cubs in 2007 and the Rangers in 2012. Dempster finally gets his first World Series experience now at the age of 36. On the other end of the experience ladder is Cardinals infielder Kolten Wong who made his major league debut after the All-star break this past July.
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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.