For Eastern Washington, confidence goes hand in hand with beating Montana

MISSOULA – Now it’s the other guys who are picking up the pieces.

“Don’t give up on these Grizzlies,” implored Missoulian sports columnist Bill Speltz on Sunday, the day after Eastern Washington took a remarkable 48-41 win at Montana.

And this from Griz coach Bob Stitt: “We have to pick ourselves up. … This was a tough one to deal with.”

That sounds a lot like Eagle Nation on the night of Sept. 9. North Dakota State had just trucked the Eagles by four scores in Cheney, leaving the Eagles empty in the win column and full of self-doubt.

“We’ll look at the film closely and get better from it because there is no choice,” Eastern coach Aaron Best said after the NDSU game.

Credit the opponents – Texas Tech and the Bison are a combined 6-0 – but props are due Eastern for a little resilience since then.

A confidence-building trip to Fordham last week set the stage Saturday for Best’s biggest test as a rookie head coach: avoiding a 1-3 start by winning in the toughest venue in the Big Sky Conference.

Going into Saturday’s game, the Eagles had won just twice at Washington-Grizzly Stadium in the last two decades, and two years ago Montana won this game 57-16.

The pressure was stoked even higher Saturday by a sellout crowd of 25,944, a rare night game at Wa-Griz and the Montana players’ raw emotion a week after losing quarterback Reese Phillips to a gruesome leg injury.

Eastern responded by doing what it does best: throw the ball and trust quarterback Gage Gubrud to get the job done.

“He’s the leader of our team, junior or not, quarterback or not,” Best said “(We told him) ‘We’ll ride your coattails,’ and he did a hell of a job getting us there.”

By game’s end, the Eagles generated 617 yards on this night, and Gubrud accounted for 560 of them, a school record. Of the Eagles’ 96 offensive plays, Gubrud passed 65 times and ran 12 more.

It almost wasn’t enough. For almost three quarters, the Eagles squandered chance after chance. After penalties, red-zone failures and the awful luck of a Hail Mary Montana touchdown just before halftime, Eastern was down 24-6.

“There was a lot of wind that went out of our sails,” Best said. “We talked at halftime that one play doesn’t define a game.”

Instead, this game was defined mostly by Gubrud and his wide receivers. A lightning rod for criticism two weeks ago, the wideouts were positively electric on Saturday.

Eastern simply couldn’t be stopped. Nsimba Webster caught 13 balls for 143 yards, and senior captain Nic Sblendorio had 189 yards on 18 catches, just two short of the record set by Cooper Kupp in 2015 at Northern Colorado.

Like most Eastern offenses, the Eagles got better in the second half. The line gave up four sacks in the first half but only one in the second. By then, the pass was setting up the run, with running backs Antoine Custer Jr. and Sam McPherson keeping the Grizzlies honest in the second half.

The defense gave up 538 yards, but rose to the occasion on three Montana possessions in the fourth quarter. Montana punted on the first, then cornerback Nzuzi Webster made a fourth-down tackle that set the Eagles up at the Griz 20.

“We just had to play through adversity,” said Webster, a redshirt junior. “This is my last game here, so it feels great to go out with a win.”

But if Best is the same coach he was two weeks ago, the good feelings are over and the players will be back to work with a purpose.

The only difference: it’s the other guys who are dealing with adversity.