Seiji Wood
Sports Editor
The ISU football team won a close game against Montana State last Saturday, 24-17. The win snapped an 11-game losing streak against the Bobcats.
The Bengals are now 5-3 overall and 4-1 in conference play and the win will ensure ISU a winning season for the first time in conference play since 2000.
“It feels good to win,” said quarterback, Tanner Gueller. “A win is a win. You’ll take them anyway you can get them…but we gotta play better on offense. It was 24-7 at one point. We had the ball and didn’t capitalize.”
With a 24-7 lead going into the fourth quarter, the Bengals turned the ball over on two consecutive drives in their own territory, helping Montana State claw its way back into the game. The Bobcats scored 10 points off those turnovers.
“We played horrible. Absolutely terrible,” said head coach Rob Phenicie. “Turnovers, that can’t happen and miss tackles. We gotta play better if we’re going to take this thing any further.”
When it came down to it, the Bengals made the stops they needed to. The Bobcats drove to the Idaho State 16-yard line on their final gasp, but a Bobcat penalty, an Aren Manu sack and broken up passes by Joe Martin and Adkin Aguirre preserved the win.
“We didn’t waiver one bit about punting the ball at the end there knowing that we were gonna force them to drive 75 yards and make them execute that whole time,” Phenicie said. “They broke a long run, but the defense stiffened up and did a great job. There was not one ounce of doubt in our minds that we weren’t gonna stop them.”
The confidence in the defense is great, but once again, the defense shouldn’t have been in that position to begin with. Phenicie is right, “we gotta play better.”
“We can’t go up 21 points and then all of a sudden make it a nail biter,” Phenicie said. “Championship teams can’t do that and that’s not what we’re gonna do. We had too many penalties, too many undisciplined penalties that angered me to death. We’re going to fix this stuff.”
The Bengals don’t have too long to do so. They go on the road this week to Oregon to take on another conference opponent in Portland State.
Portland State is currently 4-4 overall and 3-2 in conference play. This is an interesting game because Portland State is balanced on both sides of the ball. They’re about as average as it gets on offense and defense.
The key to this game for the Bengals will be to get off to a fast start and continue to outscore opponents in the first half. Idaho State has outscored its opponents 136-65 in just the second quarter alone.
Another key will be to close out games in a cleaner fashion. The Bengals have been in a lot of close games this season and have lost two of those games.
It’ll be a lot less pressure if the Bengals can start strong and keep that momentum throughout the whole game.
ISU hasn’t been too successful on the road this season. The Bengals gone 1-3 but hope to change their road struggles and secure another win in the conference this weekend.
