Big Sky notebook: Eastern Washington prepares for latest meeting with No. 8 Montana; Montana State plays at Idaho State for first time since 2018

Wyatt Hansen has started 44 games at Eastern Washington, a streak that began in the spring season of 2021 and has encompassed as many ups and downs as any other player in the program.

But of those ups and downs, some of the highest and lowest came in games against Montana, Eastern Washington’s opponent in both teams’ Big Sky openers Saturday at Roos Field in Cheney.

“That game at home in 2021 was definitely the high,” Hansen said Monday, referring to Eastern’s 34-28 victory the last time Montana played in Cheney. “The environment behind that game, we were ranked sixth, them fourth, it was a bloodbath of a game. Super fun. I don’t think anything can ever top that.”

Then there was the rematch two months later in Missoula, a game the Eagles lost 57-41 in the second round of the FCS playoffs.

“I’m going to put the playoff one as the low,” Hansen said, “having to go to Missoula and play them. That (EWU team) was a team that should have made a (national title) run.”

Eleven months after that, at the end of the 2022 season, Eastern went back to Washington-Grizzly Stadium and was trounced 63-7. That one didn’t feel great either, Hansen said.

“We didn’t do anything right that game,” he said.

Since the playoff meeting, the programs have landed on opposite ends of the Big Sky standings. Montana, which finished tied for third in the Big Sky in 2021, won the conference title outright last season and played for – and lost in – the national championship.

Eastern Washington, on the other hand, was the team tied with the Grizzlies for third place in 2021 and has endured back-to-back losing seasons in the conference since then.

“We had a lot of sixth- and seventh-year guys who started for a long time (on the 2021 team),” Hansen said. “(Since), we struggled to find who we were. It took a year and a half, two years to do it. Now we’re just trying to execute. We know who we are; we’re just trying to get it done.”

The Grizzlies have had no such issues. Now in their seventh year of Bobby Hauck’s second stint as head coach, the Grizzlies are off to a 3-1 start, the sole loss (27-24) coming at North Dakota. It was something of a sour loss for Montana, which led 24-7 at halftime.

Asked to comment on Montana’s nonconference season as a whole, Hauck said he didn’t look at things that way and that every game is unique unto itself.

“I know we’re 3-1, and I know we were up 24-7 a couple weeks ago and I feel like we probably let that one go,” Hauck said Monday during his weekly news conference. “So I kind of like where we are, but it’s all about Big Sky Conference play now.”

Montana moved up one spot to eighth in this week’s FCS Stats Perform Top 25 poll. No. 3 Montana State (4-0) and No. 4 Idaho (3-1) are the Big Sky rivals ranked higher.

Hansen said he expects to see a disciplined Grizzlies team when they come to Cheney this weekend.

“They get the little things right,” Hansen said of Montana’s defense, which ranks second in the Big Sky in total yards allowed per game at 304.5. “They play hard and are a high-effort crew. It doesn’t leave a lot of room for error.”

Eastern Washington associate head coach Marc Anderson acknowledged the 2021 playoff game as an inflection point for the program. Since then, the Eagles are 6-18, including a 1-3 start to this season. Montana over that stretch is 24-8.

The goal, Anderson said, is for the Eagles to be playing playoff games again, at home, in late November and early December as the team did so often from 2010 to 2019.

“We’ve just been trying to find that key again, to find that spot we were at as a program,” Anderson said. “That’s who we’ve been putting all our energy into being again.”

Montana State prepares for belated return to Pocatello

One of the byproducts of the Big Sky becoming a 12-team conference again when Southern Utah left after the 2021 season was that some of the conference’s teams went more years than usual between visits to the Big Sky’s football stadiums.

One example: Idaho State hasn’t played at Eastern Washington since 2016, a streak scheduled to end later this season on Nov. 16.

Another will end Saturday, when Montana State visits Holt Arena in Pocatello for the first time since 2018.

“It’s a place no one on our team has played, so it’ll be a new environment against really a new team,” MSU head coach Brent Vigen said during a Monday news conference. “I think they’re a team that’s certainly emerging. That was a big win for them last Saturday against Southern Utah.”

The Bengals beat the Thunderbirds, who are members of the Western Athletic Conference, 38-28 to improve to 2-2 on the season. It was their first Division I win of the season, the other win coming over D-II Western Oregon.

“We needed this one,” ISU second-year head coach Cody Hawkins said Saturday after the victory. “I don’t say it to the guys because every game’s the same, but you kind of know in the back of your mind, just the amount of adversity that we’ve had thrown at us in this stretch, and knowing what Southern Utah was capable of doing, that we had to find a way to get one of these three.”

Idaho State lost 52-28 the previous week to North Dakota (3-1), which is ranked ninth having notched two victories over Big Sky teams this season.

Hornets, Lumberjacks open Big Sky play

Two of Eastern Washington’s road opponents later this season, Sacramento State and Northern Arizona, will open Big Sky play against each other Saturday in Flagstaff, Arizona, in a contest between two 2-2 teams.

But how they got to that record is starkly different.

The 10th-ranked Hornets opened the year with an 18-point loss at San Jose State and a 16-point loss at Fresno State, but in the two weeks since they have trounced a pair of FCS opponents – Nicholls and Texas A&M-Commerce – by a combined score of 68-7.

Northern Arizona’s victories came against Division II Lincoln (66-6) and winless FCS team Utah Tech (45-17). Its losses came at Arizona (22-10) and at Incarnate Word – the 15th-ranked team in the FCS (38-14).

Sacramento State hosts Eastern Washington on Oct. 12. The Lumberjacks are scheduled to play their regular-season finale against the Eagles in Flagstaff on Nov. 23.