Montana losses to NAU 28-14

“We’ve got to keep Montana in the top 15 because they just had a quality loss to an NAU team that’s good enough to beat Montana” — the STATS poll voters, probably

NAU up 21-6 after a forced fumble and nice double pass

Depending on whether you count him as a Big Sky player, Joshua Kelley is arguably a bigger contributor to his team than some of the players on this list. He had tied for the most carries, 91 yds, and a TD for the Chargers in their loss to Miami

As of this comment, two different sentences on the game writeup on the Athletics website indicate that the Oregon State game was the first game of the season (one directly, the other implies it). C'mon people, you still need to proofread ChatGPT before posting it

The Aggies dropped their first contest of the 2023 campaign at nationally ranked Oregon State. Lan Larison rushed for 55 yards and Rex Connors posted 10 total tackles in his season debut.

Could be that Coors is sold at the snack bars but the independent food trucks/stalls including Sudwerk (if they feel like coming) can serve whatever they want provided they have the license.

So glad I made we made it out to this game, one of the most stunning finishes I've seen in the Pavilion.

This team feels March-ready, obviously blowing the lead was not fun but I was so impressed with the poise down the stretch.

Him being a Colfax grad jumped out at me the most honestly, could be helpful to have someone connected to the smaller SJS schools to grab some underrated recruits in our backyard. And if he turns out to be a star then it might help us keep him a little longer, like Troy Taylor and his Folsom connections

Ooh good call. I think it's beyond issues of simple audience confusion though; it wouldn't even show up properly on searches on ESPN's website

Vols twitter take / their impression of NFL scout thinking is that he's an elite blocker who can be pretty athletic as a receiver, but was underutilized this year due to our reliance on the run game and sheer amount of pass catchers available for when we did air it out. He did have a few drops that I remember but otherwise I'm inclined to agree.

Starting to get a maybe overreacted sense if existential dread for our athletics program as it’s becoming clear just how much Sac has been held back by bad coaching and institutional support in its revenue sports.

Not looking forward to getting out-recruited and out-supported by Sac in FB, MBB, and WBB for the next decade or two until the next realignment

Yup, though worth noting that there's some causality here. We've been so consistent in racking up wins against the lower Big Sky that any team that beats us gets a minimum-decent win for their playoff resume and any team that loses to us is usually a bubble team at best (unless it's their only FCS loss, which hasn't happened yet). So our conference losses are more likely to be playoff teams and our wins are more likely to not be, partly because of the outcome of our game.

Biggest example I can think of recently is Weber in 2021; they would have been a 7-4 at-large team if they somehow figured out how to stop our freshman QBs in the 4th quarter. Instead my heavy-handed sorting puts them in the same category as the Cal Poly win that year.

cmt brings up a good point in a specific criticism of one of Hawkins' years that I just expanded a bit -- almost all of Hawkins' losses across his whole Davis career were to FBS teams (specifically Pac teams except for SDSU) or FCS playoff teams. All of his losses in 2018, Spring 2021, and 2022 fall into that category.

2017
FBS record: 0-1
Playoff-team record: 1-3
Other FCS record: 4-2

2018
FBS record: 1-1
Playoff-team record: 2-2
Other FCS record: 7-0

2019
FBS record: 0-1
Playoff-team record: 1-6
Other FCS record: 4-1

2021S
FBS record: 0-0
Playoff-team record: 0-2
Other FCS record: 3-0

2021F
FBS record: 1-0
Playoff-team record: 0-3
Other FCS (and transitioning D2) record: 7-1

2022
FBS record: 0-1
Likely playoff-team record: 0-3
Other FCS record: 5-0

If I did my math right, then Hawkins is a bonkers 30-4 against non-playoff teams. Ironically including FBS doesn't hurt that number that much, he's 32-5 against non-Pac, non-playoff teams and 32-8 against everything but FCS playoff teams.

However, he's essentially never won against playoff-caliber teams not named University of San Diego; the only time the Aggies have beaten a legit playoff contender under Hawkins was our actual playoff game vs Northern Iowa coming off a bye.

Ooof, down 11 at the end of the first.

There are some positives, Turner is killing it from the arc and I've liked the Ags' hustle in forcing tie-ups and getting to the line. But Washington got hot late in the quarter

Brutal. I think it's good to have a contrary perspective but this is probably a bit of hyperbole on the contrarian side.

A couple of things stood out to me:

• Only a few of Hawkins' seasons were winning seasons -- the piece misstates that it's been 2 of the last 5 when really it's been 3 of the last 5, and there are decent odds of this season as well (if you take Massey's 45% chance to win tomorrow plus some small chance of winning @Sac). 3/6 with potential for 4/6 is far better than the 6 years preceding Hawkins.
• It was interesting to break down where Hawkins' wins have come from but I bet if you broke down a lot of BSC teams' records you'd see a substantial chunk of their wins coming from the bottom half of conference and unnoteworthy non-conference games. Sac also has a protected rivalry with Poly, and EWU has one with Portland State, etc. Not to mention the other schools get D2 teams on their schedules which we pretty much have stopped doing.
• We used to lose games to the above teams, sometimes badly. It's not clear to me what other hire except some bonkers signing like Petersen could satisfy admin and fans alike and also drag us from being one of the worst teams in D1 to a team that's actually going .500+ with our recruiting limitations.

Oh I agree, that was just before my time.

Stunned. This might be the most exciting win I've seen for any Aggie sports team, period, since I've been a fan.

(Probably it isn't the biggest upset on paper compared to something like WBB upsetting Oregon, but I'm thinking also in terms of the historical record and Cal's proximity).

Great aggressiveness on the boards and defense. Not perfect, but holding up really well even while mismatched.

It's like the shooting talent of the Corey Hawkins era team has been pasted on to the scrappy defensive teams after that

Held in the end but it is concerning how easy Bengals made it look for most of the drive.

32 is a 5-TD lead less an opposing team FG. Actually a relatively likely score differential given how the Aggie offense and defense alike have performed against weaker teams these days.

Edit: Whoops, missed the second page of replies with multiple people getting there before me

I don't agree with Weber beating Sac being good for us or even mattering that much for playoff purposes.

Best case for us I think is Idaho and Sac winning every remaining game other than when we beat them. Second best scenario is us beating a really good Idaho, losing close to undefeated Sac, and some other upsets for bubble teams.

In fact Cal Poly might be who I'm rooting for the hardest this weekend, that might eliminate Montana from the bubble