By CHRIS WALTERSKIRCHEN
This Saturday for the fifth time in their FCS play-off history the Grizzly football team has a rematch in the post-season with a team they faced in the regular season. In each of the previous 4 “rematch” games the team that lost in the regular season meeting came back to win in the post-season. Six years ago Saturday (December 6, 2008) the Griz beat Weber State 24-13 after the Wildcats had soundly defeated UM 9 weeks earlier.
The win last Saturday over San Diego was something of a milestone victory for Grizzly football; it was the program’s 200th win since claiming the National title over Marshall in 1995.
A Griz win Saturday would give retiring Griz coach Mick Delaney his 25th win as Montana head coach tying him on the career wins list with Larry Donovan, Donovan collected his 25 wins in 6 seasons and Delaney would rank the mark in just 3 seasons.
The Eastern Washington Eagles have been eliminated from the FCS Play-offs the past two seasons by home fields losses to teams that would then go on to play for the national title, Sam Houston state in 2012 and Towson last season.
As disappointing as it was to see Bobby Hauck and his staff step down at UNLV, one thing to keep in mind UNLV has attracted some very talented head coaches over the years without much success… Tony Knapp produced winners at Utah state and Boise State: John Robinson won nationals titles at USC and took the Rams to the NFC title game twice, Hauck’s immediate predecessor Mike Sanford was a long-time Urban Meyer assistant at Bowling Green and Utah and since leaving Sin City has revitalized the football program at Indiana State which won its first post-season game in 30 years last weekend.
When in 1997 the FCS national title game was awarded to Chattanooga concerns were expressed that if UT-Chattanooga made the play-offs things might be stacked for the Mocs to host more play-offs game to heighten their chances of reaching the title game. Well finally after the title game left Chattanooga the Mocs are hosting their first play-ff game in over 20 years. The UTC Mocs will host Mike Sanford and Indiana State. Ironically Bobby Hauck’s last game as Griz coach was in the last title game played in Chattanooga in 2009.
On Thursday night it will be a new experience for former Sentinel star Olivia Roberts coming to a Montana Lady Griz basketball game, she doesn’t have to sell 50-50 tickets or perform at halftime. Roberts is now a key member of the University of Wyoming who face the Lady Griz this weekend. Back in the day Olivia Roberts was a Super-Skipper and a highly touted gymnast and performed as part of halftime entertainment at UM basketball games.
Did you know that you can go from Bozeman to Missoula by way of Hattiesburg Mississippi? The North Dakota State Bisons basketball team was in Bozeman this past Sunday playing the Bobcats and this coming Sunday will be in Missoula to face the Griz. On Wednesday the NDSU Bison will be playing Southern Mississippi on the Eagles home court.
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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.