tribune

[MSUcantouchus]

BASS WILL START: Montana State will start a few transfers of its own Saturday, including former University of Hawaii running back Michael Bass.

Bass, a 5-6, 190-pound jitterbug of a back, scored MSU's lone touchdown last week in the Cats' 15-10 loss at Oklahoma State and hopes to keep the ball rolling Saturday.

Bass said the Bobcat defense caught his eye last Saturday in Stillwater, Okla.

"I was impressed," he said. "I've been playing college football for four years now and I've never been on a team that held the opponent to 15 points."

Last year at Hawaii, for example, the Rainbow defense yielded an average of 38 ppg.

Bass started nine games at Hawaii in the 2001 season, but his career went south thereafter because of injuries an a Rainbow offense that increasingly threw the football. He transferred to Montana State this spring for his final season of competition.

"I'm really pumped up," he said. "It's been so long since I started I don't know what it's like. I get the chills thinking about it."


RECORD? Montana State officials believe this could be a record-setting year for the Bobcats at the ticket window.

A record 75,716 folks paid to watch football at MSU in 1984, when the Bobcats won the NCAA I-AA national championship. The Cats' home slate in 2005, which starts Saturday with Stephen F. Austin and concludes Nov. 19 with the annual Bobcat-Grizzly game, could break a record for total attendance.

MSU officials believe the Cats could average better than 13,000 (capacity is 13,500) this fall.