Montana Grizzlies Sports, Football and Basketball : Grizzoulian

The 2008 football schedule is out. As reported on here first, the Griz will open their season down San Luis Obispo against the Cal Poly Mustangs.

Here's the complete schedule:

Date ..... Opponent ..... Time
9.6 ..... at Cal Poly ..... TBA
9.13 ..... Southern Utah ..... 1:05 p.m.
9.20 ..... UC-Davis (Homecoming) ..... 1:05 p.m.
9.27 ..... Central Washington ..... 1:05 p.m.
10.4 ..... at Weber State * ..... TBA
10.11 ..... at Eastern Washington * ..... TBA
10.18 ..... Sacramento State * ..... 1:05 p.m.
10.25 ..... at Northern Colorado * ..... TBA
11.1 ..... Northern Arizona * ..... 12:05 p.m.
11.8 ..... at Portland State * ..... TBA
11.15 ..... Idaho State * ..... 12:05 p.m.
11.22 ..... Montana State * (108th meeting) ..... 12:05 p.m.

* Conference game

The OOC is alright. We probably shouldn't be playing a DII school but whatever. Here's O'Day's rationale on playing schools from a lower division. It's his response to playing Ft. Lewis last year but fits around the fact that we're playing Central Washington:

Last year, we played Fort Lewis (Don Read loved the Division II schools to let young kids get experience) and UM Athletics netted about $300,000 - not counting what the Adams Center received for ticket fees ($1 per ticket), or what dining services produced in sales, or the bookstore... not counting what the Missoula economy saw by another home game (estimated at between $5-$7 million per home weekend).  We admit that was a "money game," as do most teams at our level.   Still, it is no different than Oregon hosting Montana for $450,000 or Iowa hosting Montana for $650,000.  Their fans expected big wins at our expense, and they, too, need to produce funds to pay their bills.

After the non-conference slate, what should be two of our toughest BSC games are on the road: we have to go to Portland to play the Vikings and to the Cheney to play the Eagles. Those should be two very challenging games. Then we cap off the season with the Brawl in Missoula and hopefully another Big Sky Championship.

• Send To A Friend
• Print This Article
• Comments (2)
• Trackbacks

More shots after the jump. Right click and press 'view image' for high resolution shots.

Warm-ups

More warm-ups.

Pre-game.

The basketball team before the game.

All the athletes.

Rachel and I.

Monte.

More Monte.

Griz Vision.

Bring em out.

Season officially starts.

Lex after his early touchdown.

Jeff Larson gets in the game.

Griz interception snuffs out any chance of a comeback.

Griz secondary showing some swagger after another late pick.

Done til next week.

• Send To A Friend
• Print This Article
• Comments
• Trackbacks

It's here. It's finally here. We've spent the past offseason talking at length about moving up, playing cupcakes and recruits. Driving drunk, murder and abuse. Practice, injuries and coaches. It's over. None if it matters now. It's gameday. The Griz will kick off against Southern Utah in a mere three hours. I just drove to the grocery store and you can tell the whole city can sense the approaching kickoff. Everyone picks up their hotdogs and Pabst as the discussion switches to wins and losses, offensive tackles and defensive ends, Walter Payton Award Nominees and All-Americans. It's finally here. Have a great gameday everyone.

For those of you who won't be one of the roughly 23,000 in attendance, a local Montana affiliate should be carrying the game. For those not in our 'last best place,' there's the sometimes awful BigSkytv.org for streaming video. As far as audio goes, some local radio stations with websites should have the game. I've heard KOFI radio out of Kalispell has the game pretty clear. There's also MontanaGrizzlies.com for live audio coverage.

Once again, enjoy the game everyone.

Go Griz.

• Send To A Friend
• Print This Article
• Comments
• Trackbacks

THe University of Montana is coming off a season in which they won 12 games for their 21st consecutive winning season. Southern Utah won three games in a season that finished with seven Which do you think would line up nine ranked teams? Yeah, that'd be the Thunderbirds. After all the losses, you'd think the head coach would be sick of tough opponents. Nope.

From the Great Falls Tribune:

"I love to tell people we have one of the toughest schedules in the country," SUU coach Wes Meier said Tuesday before practice in Cedar City, Utah. 
     
"Our Athletic Director, Ken Beazer, put it together, but it's a schedule we look forward to. When I got here (four years ago) I told our AD we want to play the best teams we can play ... people think I'm crazy, but I don't want to play weak teams."

No danger of that.

Besides UM, the T-Birds will take on No. 4 North Dakota State, No. 6 Youngstown State, No. 9 Northern Iowa, No. 11 Southern Illinois, No. 12 McNeese State, No. 14 Cal Poly, No. 19 South Dakota State and No. 22 Montana State. Those are the preseason rankings of the new FCS Coaches Poll.

Go back to what Hauck had to say about UM's soft schedule. Doesn't it seem a bit off? The school with no success on the field lines up the tough opponents while the Griz stay home and line up cupcakes. I've said this before but it's worth mentioning again. I understand the difficulties in scheduling someone tough but the coach shouldn't be content with easy home games, no matter how hard it is to schedule tough road ones.

• Send To A Friend
• Print This Article
• Comments (1)
• Trackbacks

Seven. It's not just a great name. Of all the rankings and statistics in football, seven is the biggest number coming into this game. The Southern Utah Thunderbirds have lost seven games in row leading up to the season-opener against the Griz.

In 2006, the Thunderbirds went 3-8 last season and 0-4 in the Great West Conference. Their last game was a 59-0 reaming by Southern Illinois. The Griz and Thunderbirds had one common opponent last year: Weber State. The Griz beat them 33-30 on the road and SUU lost 24-13 in their matchup in Ogden.

SUU's game notes give us SUU head coach Wes Meier's take on the Griz:

“Offensively I think their strength is in the running game but they definitely have good receivers and are good at throwing it down the field. They’re balanced with good personnel everywhere but I think they’re excited to have a guy like Lex Hilliard back and look forward to using him a lot.

“Defensively they’re a pretty standard 4-3 look and they play pretty straight up. They’ll run some zone and man blitzes but they usually keep it simple because they’re so sound and tough. Troy Bierman is an all-American and there’s no question he’s a good player. Their safeties and linebackers are also very good players. They have good speed all around and really get after you.”

Meier on his own squad:

“This was by far the best pre-season camp we’ve had in my four years here. While there are still areas we’ll need to work on this week we feel pretty good about where we are heading into the season.

“We’ve seen the defense really step up the last couple of weeks but [Saturday] I really liked the way our offense – particularly our first offense – looked.

...

“We’re going to be ready and we’re going to be excited. Montana presents a huge challenge for us but we’re looking at it as an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to come out and go head-to-head with one of the best teams in the nation and see how we fare.”

Another interesting note: the last matchup between the Griz and the Thunderbirds. Southern Utah hung 45 on our Griz here in Missoula--and still lost. The final score was 68-45. This might be an indication echoing what many Griz fans have already said: Southern Utah can put up a fight.

• Send To A Friend
• Print This Article
• Comments
• Trackbacks

With the coming and going of the Spring Game, it will be quite some time before we see the Griz football team on the field again. When we do see them in actual competition again, it will be against Southern Utah University. I don't know much about them other than that they want to join us in the Big Sky Conference. To find out a bit more I checked on Youtube to see if I could find any informative embarrassing video.

Here's the result:

Wow, where have I heard that song before? Oh, yeah. Let's hope it produces similar results.

• Send To A Friend
• Print This Article
• Comments
• Trackbacks