That Empty Feeling: Montana Griz Football Overwhelmed in Brawl

An offense without punch spelled doom and an agonizingly long day.

The University of Montana Grizzly defense held up well for the better part of three quarters of the game. But with little support on the other side of the ball, the wheels were destined to come off.

The Griz rarely had any sustained movement when they had the ball, and because of it, the Montana State Bobcats methodically pulled away, and dominated the 123rd Brawl of the Wild football game, 34-11 in Bozeman Saturday afternoon. With the win, MSU wins the outright Big Sky Conference title and completes a perfect 12-0 regular season.

There was promise early as the Griz, trailing only 7-0 in the first quarter, drove deep into Bobcat territory. But a 15-yard personal foul penalty followed by a false start infraction was too much to overcome, and Montana settled for a field goal to make the score 7-3. Even trailing 20-3 at halftime, there was optimism that an early second-half score might be a confidence builder.

Never happened.

From there it was all Montana State on both sides of the ball. The Griz did not surrender any huge plays to the Bobcat offense until well into the third quarter, but the continued lack of continuity on offense failed to give Montana much hope as the game wore on into the final 15 minutes.

The Griz were down 27-3 when finally, an Eli Gillman touchdown run and subsequent two-point conversion made it 27-11, and was the only time Montana got in the end zone.

With the loss, Montana falls to 8-4 on the season, and awaits their Football Championship Subdivision Playoff fate, when brackets are announced tomorrow morning at 10:30 Mountain Time on ESPN. The Griz will need to ranked between 9th and 16th in the playoff seating for a chance to host a home game over Thanksgiving weekend. The guess here is that will happen, then we see if the game is scheduled for Friday night or Saturday afternoon.

Either way, we look forward to see dedicated fans of Griz Nation then.