I’m looking at that second round matchup with Idaho or Montana State since we didn’t play either one this year. I guess South Dakota also.

They’re really dragging this thing out by showing highlights of games from yesterday.

SDSt
Montana
South Dakota
Idaho
Albany
Montana St
Furman
Villanova

That’s the top 8. Weird not seeing NDSt in there.

If we get left out this year I’ll be annoyed but much less so than last year. At least there’s a logical case for Sac over us. Last year it was “uh, Idaho and Montana won an extra game (ignoring H2H and SOS) and Montana will bring in more money”.

The only thing we have on Sac is H2H. They have better wins and better losses than we do. If Sac played out schedule there’s a decent chance they’re 8-2 besides the Causeway. At best we would likely have been 6-4 with their schedule before the Causeway and probably 5-5.

Random thing I came across. South Dakota St is 11-0 this year, including 8-0 in the 12-team MVFC. There are three bad teams in the MVFC. SDSt didn't play any of those three which means the played and beat each of the next best 8 teams in the conference.

Yeah, losing to a 5-6 and a 4-7 team seems like it will be held against us a bit. Like if you just swapped those to losses to be against Montana St and Idaho, I'm guessing we'd be in easy. Like last year if we were 7-4, swapping out the SDSU loss for a win against a 4-7 team, we would have been in the playoffs. This year we have the extra win but the resume isn't quite as strong.

At least one will make it so we can throw #3 out. Sac was a top-10 team coming into today and this loss won’t drop them that far. I also think it’s unlikely we get in and they get left out. They’ve got a better win and better losses than we do. Clearly the committee doesn’t care that much about H2H otherwise we would have made the playoffs over Idaho last year (not exactly the same since they were 7-4 and we were 6-5). So most likely I would guess both get in. But I could see Sac getting in and us being left out.

We better get a playoff spot now.

Ballgame!

Need to either get a stop or make them use clock. No quick drive here.

Defense is balling right now. Would be nice to get this to 17 or 21 before half.

14-0! Let’s go!

Which year was it where there was lightning and the game got delayed for an hour or so at halftime? Lot of rain that day too, though it was at the new stadium so the field was fine. We were going to stay for the second half despite the rain until the lightning came.

SDSU and the Montana schools will likely all have byes so there's no way we draw them. NDSU was ranked 12 and just beat the #11 team by 24. Pending other results this weekend, it wouldn't shock me if the committee gave them a bye too.

I think Sac is in regardless. They're a top-10 team now and unless we beat them by like 50, they're not going to drop that far in the rankings. Sac has the better win plus they've only lost to the three teams better than them so far. Meanwhile we lost to a pair of 4-6 teams. I would hope that us beating them gets us in at 7-4 but can't say for sure. Like someone else said, depends on how the rest of the bubble teams look. The Big Sky is highly rated so that helps. And beating Sac would be a quality win. But I think we'd have a better chance if we had lost to Idaho and Montana St rather than EWU and NAU.

Bottom line is we 100% have to win to have any sort of a chance.

I couldn't tell you what his pro prospects are but if he has them, going to a bigger school and playing well will make it more likely he gets drafted.

I think if we go 7-4 we'll have a good chance of getting in. We're behind Montana St, Montana, Idaho and Sac. Going 3-1 either means getting a signature win over Sac or beating all three of NAU, Port St, Idaho St. We know the committee will take 5 Big Sky teams, they did it last year. We also know that the committee is willing to take a 7-4 team over a 6-5 team even though the 6-5 team beat the crap out of the 7-4 team. So EWU is probably out since they're already 2-4 and would need to win at Montana St (among other game) to go 7-4. After the top-4 teams, we're the only other Big Sky team with only 3 losses.

Will we go 3-1 or 4-0 to end the year? I don't know. But generally speaking, over the past few years this team has shown a pretty consistent ability to beat teams worse than them while losing to teams better than them. We're a bad-good team.

Talk about a let down game. A week after hammering North Dakota State, North Dakota lost 27-0 to Northern Iowa today.

Unless I missed one (and there aren't many losses to miss), it's their worst loss since losing 37-6 to Cal Poly in 2005. They lost by 24 to South Dakota St in the title game last year and by 24 to Southern Illinois in the spring of 2021.