Montana Grizzlies Sports, Football and Basketball : Grizzoulian

More than 30 percent of this year's preseason All-Big Sky Conference football team will come from the University of Montana. Here's the complete team, with the Montana kids in bold:

Offense

• QB-Cole Bergquist, Montana
• RB-Lex Hillard, Montana
• FB-Bobby McClintock, Portland State
• TE-Shaun Fitzpatrick, Northern Arizona
• OL-Cody Balogh, Montana
• OL-David Hale, Weber State
• OL-George Yarno, Idaho State
• OL-Matt Alfred, Eastern Washington
• OL-Brennan Carvalho, Portland State
• WR-Alex Watson, Northern Arizona
• WR-Eric Allen, Montana
• WR-Eddie Thompson, Idaho State
• K-Dan Carpenter, Montana
• KR-Bryant Eteuati, Weber State

Defense

• DE-Kroy Biermann, Montana
• DE-Cole Smith, Portland State
• DT-Aaron Papich, Montana State
• DT-Dallas Mauga, Sacramento State
• LB-Cyrus Mulitalo, Sacramento State
• LB-Epikopo King, Montana State
• LB-Tyler Joyce, Montana
• LB-Bobby Daly, Montana State
• LB-Jordan Senn, Portland State
• CB-KJ Gerard, Northern Arizona
• CB-Ricky Wilson, Northern Arizona
• S-Torrey Thomas, Montana
• S-Colt Anderson, Montana
• P-Dan Zeidman, Idaho State
• ST-Kenneth Mackins, Portland State

The most debatable UM selection has to be Cole Bergquist at quarterback. Odd that a guy who's never really been #1 on the depth chart and still hasn't been tabbed as the Griz starter would be voted the best signal-caller in the conference.

With almost half their starters on the all-conference team, it's not much surprise they were unanimously voted as the favorite to win the conference.

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It's really hard for me to give you any good impressions from Friday's Griz football scrimmage because I really didn't walk away feeling very impressed. It wasn't that we played bad, it's just that nothing really stood out.

I went into the scrimmage not expecting much with the two guys I would most like to see, Craig Chambers and JD Quinn, were out with shoulder and "undisclosed" injuries respectively. Even so, I was interested to see the quarterback race and how our running backs were doing.

Here are some pretty basic observations:

• The quarterback race seems pretty hope but I believe the job will be Bergquists almost by default as none of them really stood out. I think I may have developed some bias against Bergquist after seeing him next to Swogger. He just seems so small and weak-armed after watching Swogger play. It's like watching Brett Favre and being afraid of when Aaron Rodgers time eventually comes. However, Bergquist has the mobility inside the pocket that Swogger just didn't have.
  
  • They really did not pass the ball much during the scrimmage, at least not with the first team. It was really kind of discouraging. With there being something of a quarterback controversy, I figured they would want to air it out more.
  • The only real good pass of the day was about a 35 yarder from Bergquist to Allen. Seemed like it may have been due to strong pass protection as Cole had a lot of time to go through his progressions before coming back to hit a wide open Eric Allen.
• The backs played well, just about all of them making strong moves in the open field. It was good to see Lex out there. Not sure if he played much or at all in the 11 on 11 scrimmage. This is one of our deepest positions with TBF, Lex, and Coleman all being great players.
  • We ran the swing play a ton. The type of thing Baylark of UMass killed us with. However, the play was rarely run smoothly. Quarterbacks were consistently tossing bad passes out in the flats that were either incomplete, too high or behind the receiver.
  • The offensive line was not opening up holes and often letting guys into the backfield. Our backs were forced to make a move or break a tackle before they even got to the line of scrimmage.
• I almost felt robbed. The whole thing lasted about 90 minutes, maybe a bit less. They spent probably 70 minutes running a normal practice and 20 minutes scrimmaging. I mean watching practice is worthwhile but I wasn't interested in watching the QBs hit wide open receivers and having no idea where they were actually trying to throw it.
  

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There's an interesting editorial/complaint in the Montana Kaimin today about how the football team and their media relation skills kind of, well, blow. The article compares Kaimin reporters' efforts to get in contact with Bobby Hauck (as well as Cole Bergquist) and Larry Krystkowiak.

This week, one Kaimin sports reporter encountered people eager to provide information and quick to return calls, while another experienced gag orders, stonewalls and canned answers.

The ironic part of this scenario is that the former situation was dealing with an NBA team under much greater public and media scrutiny than the team that caused the difficulties: the University of Montana’s own Grizzly football team.
Access this week to the Milwaukee Bucks’ new head coach, former Griz basketball coach Larry Krystkowiak, and NBA player Lynn Greer was easy and straightforward.

But, when asked who was leading the Grizzly quarterback race, head coach Bobby Hauck responded that it’s way too early to tell and that it’s a wide-open race between four players. Quarterback Cole Bergquist couldn’t talk about his chances since the Athletic Department has made him unavailable to the media.

This just seems to me like an example of the Griz football team knowing that they are the kings of the state, or at least Missoula, and thinking they don't have to give anything back. It's really kind of upsetting. One thing that kind of irked me, and no one else seemed to notice, was that after the loss to UMass, they did nothing to acknowledge the crowd's support throughout the year. After the last home game, I've seen many college teams make they way over to the student section and show some form of gratitude to the students that have invested so much in them.

Another reason for the snubbing of reporters is that I don't think that they realize that we, the media, are actually out to help them. I recently tried to get in contact with a couple basketball players and never heard back. You do realize that Dahlberg was pretty empty this year and that media coverage only means more attention. More often than not, the media helps, not hurts, teams.

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Griz QB position still undecided

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