Big Sky notebook: No. 3 Montana State clashes with No. 1 South Dakota State; Eastern Washington gets opportunity to upset Fresno State

One week after Eastern Washington traveled to the Midwest to play one of the best teams in the FCS, fellow Big Sky team Montana State will get its shot at a perennial FCS power.

That game will be held in Brookings, South Dakota, as No. 1-ranked and defending national champion South Dakota State hosts No. 3 Montana State on Saturday.

“This will be our third game in 18 against them, so there’s familiarity,” MSU head coach Brent Vigen said during his media availability on Monday. “We both bring a lot of players back. It’s gonna be one of those games that I’d imagine will go down to the fourth quarter.”

Both teams won their opening games last week to set up this contest, a rematch of a 2022 semifinal game (SDSU won 39-18).

They also met in the semifinals a year before, when Montana State won 31-17 before losing in the championship game to North Dakota State.

“You don’t see a real weakness across the board from them, and you shouldn’t,” Vigen said. “They’re defending champs. They didn’t lose a whole lot. That’s the nature of the beast.”

Four times this season a team from the Big Sky will play a team from the Missouri Valley Football Conference. Second-ranked NDSU beat Eastern 35-10 last weekend; this weekend MSU and SDSU play and Weber State visits Northern Iowa. Next week, Northern Iowa will play at Idaho State.

Last season, the two conferences split their six matchups.

From a championship standpoint, the MVFC has dominated the FCS lately, winning 10 of the past 12 titles. South Dakota State’s last year was the program’s first; NDSU won the other nine. Twice over that span a Big Sky team has reached the national title game and lost: MSU went in 2021 and EWU did in 2018.

Big Sky gets its shots at the Mountain West

A week after Idaho State hung with San Diego State in a 36-28 loss, five Big Sky teams – including Eastern Washington – will give the conference another chance at an FBS win on Saturday when they play teams from the Mountain West Conference.

Before the Eagles face the Bulldogs in the evening, Portland State (0-1) will play at Wyoming (1-0); Cal Poly (1-0) visits San Jose State (0-2); No. 7 Idaho (1-0) goes to Nevada (0-1); and Idaho State (0-1) drives 2 hours south to face Utah State (0-1).

The Big Sky picked up two wins over the MVC last year: Sacramento State beat Colorado State 41-10 and Weber State beat Utah State 35-7. Both of those Big Sky teams reached the FCS playoffs.

In 2021, a playoff-bound Eastern team beat UNLV 35-33 in overtime. Those represent half of the six Big Sky wins over MWC teams since the start of the 2013 season.

Fresno State has never lost to a Big Sky opponent.

UC Davis heads to Oregon State

In what could potentially be a Big Sky-MWC matchup in the coming years, 15th-ranked UC Davis (1-0) plays at FBS No. 16 Oregon State (1-0) on Saturday.

The Aggies – Eastern Washington’s first Big Sky opponent this season, on Sept. 23 – are coming off a 48-10 win at Texas A&M-Commerce, which recently made the jump from Division II to FCS. Oregon State beat San Jose State 42-17 in California last week.

“It’s gonna be a huge challenge, but that’s why you do it,” UC Davis coach Dan Hawkins said during his media availability this week. “So we’re looking forward to that part of it.”

The last time a Big Sky team beat a Pac-12 team was in 2021, when Northern Arizona beat Arizona 21-19 and Montana beat 20th-ranked Washington 13-7 in Seattle.

In 2013, Eastern Washington beat No. 25 Oregon State 49-46.