Well we won.

[tetoncat]

Rewatched the game tonight. Penalties inexcusable. I will never understand why Sterbick and Vigen abandon the run. I will never understand why we have our LBs matched up vs WRs rather than a nickel. Great win. Go Cats!

They abandoned the run because they had to chase the penalty yards.

There were many situations outside of the penalty negatives to run the ball or stick with it.

I only remember thinking one time that half, man maybe run it there, and that was Lamson getting sacked after the blocked fg. Other than that i guess I trusted they liked the matchups outside more than in the run game (rightfully so). That was a loaded front 7 and we had gotten whatever we wanted throwing the ball. But you're probably right, fans should trust their instincts honed on the couch with a coors more than the professionals who had game planned for 2 weeks and almost never lose, and who ended up leading our first champ in 41 years.

Sure. Lamson was 1 for 6 to start 2nd half. As good as he was 1st half that 3rd quarter wasn't good and then he got going again.

[tetoncat]

I’m not even sure what the f’ing point of this thread is. Some of us have been waiting 41+ years for this. How do I feel? Like a million bucks.

No kidding, it's wild that MSU just won the National Championship and that the reaction of some is to gripe about referees or that the Bobcats didn't win by a larger margin.

So let's have 1 thread that we can just write. Yay we won we're National Champs over and over. All the other threads are unnecessary.
It is a fan board and okay to discuss what happened in the game. Multiple interviews and pods on Skyline and elsewhere discussing the game with thoughts on what went right, wrong and in between. It's okay. Not bad fans because we want to have those discussions.

[BelligerentBobcat]

Rewatched the game tonight. Penalties inexcusable. I will never understand why Sterbick and Vigen abandon the run. I will never understand why we have our LBs matched up vs WRs rather than a nickel. Great win. Go Cats!

Because if you’re playing a 4-2-5 with your safeties in 2 high if they go 4 WR, you’re going to have a LB & NB matched up with a WR.

Ok. Ill take the NB. Rather have Gray on a WR rather than Grebe/Taylor. Maybe Daily with his speed but still...

You read my post wrong. In that scenario, you have a nickel AND a LB matched up on a WR.

[GoldstoneCat]

Rewatched the game tonight. Penalties inexcusable. I will never understand why Sterbick and Vigen abandon the run. I will never understand why we have our LBs matched up vs WRs rather than a nickel. Great win. Go Cats!

They abandoned the run because they had to chase the penalty yards.

There were many situations outside of the penalty negatives to run the ball or stick with it.

I only remember thinking one time that half, man maybe run it there, and that was Lamson getting sacked after the blocked fg. Other than that i guess I trusted they liked the matchups outside more than in the run game (rightfully so). That was a loaded front 7 and we had gotten whatever we wanted throwing the ball. But you're probably right, fans should trust their instincts honed on the couch with a coors more than the professionals who had game planned for 2 weeks and almost never lose, and who ended up leading our first champ in 41 years.

Sure. Lamson was 1 for 6 to start 2nd half. As good as he was 1st half that 3rd quarter wasn't good and then he got going again.

On edit: that was a little harsh of me to KIX. I apologize. Many including me were frustrated in that second half but mine was more with guys not holding their water, not making plays, not picking up blitzes than it was with the game plan or the play calling. But again, we won and this is the golden era we're in right now so I don't think it's worth dwelling on too much. If a fella wants some answers, pro tip: Join the QB club and hear it from the man himself!

[tetoncat]

Rewatched the game tonight. Penalties inexcusable. I will never understand why Sterbick and Vigen abandon the run. I will never understand why we have our LBs matched up vs WRs rather than a nickel. Great win. Go Cats!

They abandoned the run because they had to chase the penalty yards.

There were many situations outside of the penalty negatives to run the ball or stick with it.

I only remember thinking one time that half, man maybe run it there, and that was Lamson getting sacked after the blocked fg. Other than that i guess I trusted they liked the matchups outside more than in the run game (rightfully so). That was a loaded front 7 and we had gotten whatever we wanted throwing the ball. But you're probably right, fans should trust their instincts honed on the couch with a coors more than the professionals who had game planned for 2 weeks and almost never lose, and who ended up leading our first champ in 41 years.

Sure. Lamson was 1 for 6 to start 2nd half. As good as he was 1st half that 3rd quarter wasn't good and then he got going again.

On edit: that was a little harsh of me to KIX. I apologize. Many including me were frustrated in that second half but mine was more with guys not holding their water, not making plays, not picking up blitzes than it was with the game plan or the play calling. But again, we won and this is the golden era we're in right now so I don't think it's worth dwelling on too much. If a fella wants some answers, pro tip: Join the QB club and hear it from the man himself!

But we can't post what we hear there. Where's the funny that.
Now back to our regularly scheduled Celebration

[TomCat88]

Collectively, it wasn't MSU's best game. Despite it all, I thought the defense played fairly well. They didn't give up a lot of gash plays, which has been the standard all year. They held Dawson to 4.3, which is a win. They had a lot working against in terms of TOP and Dowler going out. Brott played the best game of his career IMO. They held ISU to 5.6 per play.

Had the offense continued to play like it did in the first half, this would've been a different game. You'd think the FS's would've come to a near halt in the 2nd half. While MSU got around them in the first half, the second half ones came back to bite them.

MSU got some random plays their way in the end, but ISU did so as well by recovering its own fumble in the EZ and getting a couple bad calls in their favor.

But this a game that you don't care how you win, you just play it to win.

[technoCat]

Collectively, it wasn't MSU's best game. Despite it all, I thought the defense played fairly well. They didn't give up a lot of gash plays, which has been the standard all year. They held Dawson to 4.3, which is a win. They had a lot working against in terms of TOP and Dowler going out. Brott played the best game of his career IMO. They held ISU to 5.6 per play.

Had the offense continued to play like it did in the first half, this would've been a different game. You'd think the FS's would've come to a near halt in the 2nd half. While MSU got around them in the first half, the second half ones came back to bite them.

MSU got some random plays their way in the end, but ISU did so as well by recovering its own fumble in the EZ and getting a couple bad calls in their favor.

But this a game that you don't care how you win, you just play it to win.

At the end of the day, them boys looked the avalanche in the face and said no. I think it might take more resiliency to have a team come back like that on you than to be the team coming back.

[Montanabob]

Collectively, it wasn't MSU's best game. Despite it all, I thought the defense played fairly well. They didn't give up a lot of gash plays, which has been the standard all year. They held Dawson to 4.3, which is a win. They had a lot working against in terms of TOP and Dowler going out. Brott played the best game of his career IMO. They held ISU to 5.6 per play.

Had the offense continued to play like it did in the first half, this would've been a different game. You'd think the FS's would've come to a near halt in the 2nd half. While MSU got around them in the first half, the second half ones came back to bite them.

MSU got some random plays their way in the end, but ISU did so as well by recovering its own fumble in the EZ and getting a couple bad calls in their favor.

But this a game that you don't care how you win, you just play it to win.

Sort of the story the whole season.....
Never played up to their 1000% in any game, but survived the season.

[Camo_Cat]

Collectively, it wasn't MSU's best game. Despite it all, I thought the defense played fairly well. They didn't give up a lot of gash plays, which has been the standard all year. They held Dawson to 4.3, which is a win. They had a lot working against in terms of TOP and Dowler going out. Brott played the best game of his career IMO. They held ISU to 5.6 per play.

Had the offense continued to play like it did in the first half, this would've been a different game. You'd think the FS's would've come to a near halt in the 2nd half. While MSU got around them in the first half, the second half ones came back to bite them.

MSU got some random plays their way in the end, but ISU did so as well by recovering its own fumble in the EZ and getting a couple bad calls in their favor.

But this a game that you don't care how you win, you just play it to win.

At the end of the day, them boys looked the avalanche in the face and said no. I think it might take more resiliency to have a team come back like that on you than to be the team coming back.

Winning the TOP battle was ISU's gameplan all season. Go back and look at their past games, and in particular their 4 playoffs wins leading up to the natty. How do you beat the other team? Keep them from scoring. What's the best way to do that? Don't let them have the ball. Our defense was gassed. ISU held the ball for twice as long as we did. On top of that, a few of our scoring drives only took a matter of minutes off the clock.

I felt we should have tried to run the ball more coming out of the second half to give a defense a break. Or at least a few short passing plays (bubble screens, passes to the backs in the flat), etc. to try to keep the offense out there longer. As it turned out, our defense made just enough plays and special teams did the rest. Really a team win all the way around...

[TomCat88]

Collectively, it wasn't MSU's best game. Despite it all, I thought the defense played fairly well. They didn't give up a lot of gash plays, which has been the standard all year. They held Dawson to 4.3, which is a win. They had a lot working against in terms of TOP and Dowler going out. Brott played the best game of his career IMO. They held ISU to 5.6 per play.

Had the offense continued to play like it did in the first half, this would've been a different game. You'd think the FS's would've come to a near halt in the 2nd half. While MSU got around them in the first half, the second half ones came back to bite them.

MSU got some random plays their way in the end, but ISU did so as well by recovering its own fumble in the EZ and getting a couple bad calls in their favor.

But this a game that you don't care how you win, you just play it to win.

At the end of the day, them boys looked the avalanche in the face and said no. I think it might take more resiliency to have a team come back like that on you than to be the team coming back.

Good point. I'm glad you reminded me of that. It reminds me of when Julius Davis said something like that after the SDSU loss. He said we're going right into the storm and we're not looking back.

[coloradocat]

Collectively, it wasn't MSU's best game. Despite it all, I thought the defense played fairly well. They didn't give up a lot of gash plays, which has been the standard all year. They held Dawson to 4.3, which is a win. They had a lot working against in terms of TOP and Dowler going out. Brott played the best game of his career IMO. They held ISU to 5.6 per play.

Had the offense continued to play like it did in the first half, this would've been a different game. You'd think the FS's would've come to a near halt in the 2nd half. While MSU got around them in the first half, the second half ones came back to bite them.

MSU got some random plays their way in the end, but ISU did so as well by recovering its own fumble in the EZ and getting a couple bad calls in their favor.

But this a game that you don't care how you win, you just play it to win.

At the end of the day, them boys looked the avalanche in the face and said no. I think it might take more resiliency to have a team come back like that on you than to be the team coming back.

Winning the TOP battle was ISU's gameplan all season. Go back and look at their past games, and in particular their 4 playoffs wins leading up to the natty. How do you beat the other team? Keep them from scoring. What's the best way to do that? Don't let them have the ball. Our defense was gassed. ISU held the ball for twice as long as we did. On top of that, a few of our scoring drives only took a matter of minutes off the clock.

I felt we should have tried to run the ball more coming out of the second half to give a defense a break. Or at least a few short passing plays (bubble screens, passes to the backs in the flat), etc. to try to keep the offense out there longer. As it turned out, our defense made just enough plays and special teams did the rest. Really a team win all the way around...

Even with our defense being gassed the main reason they caught up with us wasn't what their offense was doing but what our offense was (and wasn't) doing. We kept shooting ourselves in the foot (whether induced or not) which took us out of our rhythm. Imagine if we only had 5 false starts instead of 9. OT probably doesn't even happen and instead we win by double digits like we all thought we would.

We could have tried to implement a slightly different game plan but it was our mistakes that made ISU's plan work, not their implementation of it.

[MSU Doc]

So many memorable plays. In the moment, it was a rollercoaster. In hindsight, other than the false starts and errant snaps, I'm glad it played out exactly as it did. While a 24-48 win would have been easier on my blood pressure, the competitiveness of the game, right down to the 4th-down play in OT, probably gave Montana State much more national exposure and made the game more memorable.

[84CatGrad]

I've always said I would be happy with a 1-point win every single time the Cats play. We won. I'm happy. And I get to tell my grandkids I was there when McMillan blocked the FG, Parsons blocked the XP, Taco made the catch, and Sansted sealed the deal.

[Common Cat]

I despise the title of this thread.

[KIX]

Rewatched the game tonight. Penalties inexcusable. I will never understand why Sterbick and Vigen abandon the run. I will never understand why we have our LBs matched up vs WRs rather than a nickel. Great win. Go Cats!

Because if you’re playing a 4-2-5 with your safeties in 2 high if they go 4 WR, you’re going to have a LB & NB matched up with a WR.

Ok. Ill take the NB. Rather have Gray on a WR rather than Grebe/Taylor. Maybe Daily with his speed but still...

You read my post wrong. In that scenario, you have a nickel AND a LB matched up on a WR.

Fair. Bad matchup for a LB, at any rate. The ISU OC definitely exploited this with #5.