Bobcats sporting some familiar faces
When Jimmy Lake left the Eastern Washington coaching staff the Eagles knew they had lost a good football coach.
When he comes back to Woodward Field they don’t want to know he is “100 times better.”
Lake is now the secondary coach for former Eastern coach Mike Kramer at Montana State, which plays the Eagles at 2 p.m. on Saturday.
“I’m going to take it as it’s the best pass defense against the best pass offense, one of the best passing teams in the nation,” Lake said. “I can’t think of it as going up against my old school. It’s not going to be that difficult.”
Besides, Lake is just happy to be working.
Lake left the Eagles to join Keith Gilbertson’s staff at Washington, but found himself out of work after one year when Gilbertson was fired.
“I learned from a defensive back guru in Phil Snow,” said Lake, talking about the Huskies’ veteran defensive coordinator. “I was coaching alongside guys that have been coaching as long as I’ve been alive. We just happened to be in a bad situation.”
Lake, who coached cornerbacks and nicklebacks for the Huskies, knew there was a chance it would be a one-year job but it was a chance he had to take.
“I learned more in one year than I did in eight years of playing and coaching before that,” he said. “We had good secondaries at Eastern and technique-wise we did the same things, which is probably why I got the job. The things I learned are game-planning, calling the game, putting my DB’s in the best spots to be successful. Those are the things I need to be a defensive coordinator in the future.”
Learning from multiple mentors, which usually means plenty of moving around, is the way up the coaching ladder. Lake, 28, is willing to bounce around if that’s what it takes to fulfill his goals of coaching in the NFL and be a head coach at some level.
“Jimmy is one of those guys that is going to do well in whatever he does,” Eastern coach Paul Wulff said. “If his focus is football he’ll do extremely well and he has done well. He’s competitive and he’s smart.”
Bobcat-Eagle numbers
Montana State has not allowed a quarterback to throw for more than 300 yards this season. Eastern’s Erik Meyer has thrown for more than 300 yards in every game except one and has surpassed 400 in the last two games. … Bobcats quarterback Travis Lulay is MSU’s leading rusher (487 yards), but redshirt freshman Evin Groves ran for 112 yards and three TDs in a 37-16 win over Sacramento State. In the previous four games Groves had 109 yards on 23 carries. … Lulay is on track to break the conference record for total offense. He just passed former Montana star Dave Dickenson with 11,673 yards and only trails Jamie Martin (12,287) of Weber State and Doug Nussmeier (12,027) of Idaho with two games, and maybe playoffs, to go … Meyer, threw only 24 passes as a freshman, is ninth on the list (10,064). … EWU receiver Eric Kimble has 238 receptions for third on the league list. He is 13 behind Sacramento State’s Fred Amey and 20 behind Idaho’s Kasey Dunn. He is 211 yards behind Amey’s career record of 4,049 yards and 10 yards behind Dunn.