“I think a bye week in September is tantamount to disaster,” Kramer said this week ahead of Saturday’s important match-up with Montana.
“I think a bye week in October is a migraine headache,” he went on, “and a bye week in November is a Christmas present.”
“If you can find some time off in November you’re bound to play well after that,” Kramer said. “We were able to take six, seven guys and hold them out of contact all week long,” he added. “Whether they can play well on Saturday remains to be seen but to me it seems like a tremendous asset to any program to be able to have a bye week in November.”
Kramer still hasn’t been able to put a real handle on what happened to the Bobcats when they lost three straight home games following a stunning season-opening win at Colorado.
All he knows is that his team has rebounded from pending disaster to win six straight games and once again put itself in position to share the Big Sky Conference title and pick up the league’s automatic berth with a win against Montana.
“Stinkfest” is one word Kramer has used to describe the three-week span that saw his team lose 35-24 to Division II Chadron State of Nebraska, 45-0 to I-AA UC-Davis and - most damaging of all - 19-10 to Eastern Washington. Had the Cats at least beaten Eastern this Saturday’s game would have been for the outright BSC crown.
“We played great at Colorado and we did a lot of neat things and then forgot how to do them,” Kramer recalled. “Three plays into the Chadron State game we were in trouble and we didn’t rebound until we went to Northern Arizona.
“So it was a long, arduous, soul-searching, gut-wrenching, hand-wringing three weeks,” said Kramer, never at a loss for adjectives. “Since then we’ve settled in emotionally and mentally to a state that really I can’t even describe.”
The seventh-year Bobcat coach said he can’t put a finger on what turned it around, only saying that his team basically found leadership and the ability “not to panic” with a different set of guys taking over from week to week.
“As a team we’ve just kind of gravitated towards whoever’s hot and rode that to the end of the ball game,” he explained. “Just some neat things have happened to a team that dug itself into a pretty serious hole in September.”
Minus the Lulay Factor - the ability over the past four years for quarterback Travis Lulay to seemingly bring the team from behind by himself time after time - this year’s Cats have often found themselves jumping out to early leads and then fending off late rallies.
Kramer said the 2006 Bobcats have learned they need to get on the board early to have their best chance to win. They have played well enough early to get two-score leads on most teams from October on. Defensively, after putting virtually no pressure on opposing quarterbacks through September, the Bobcats have turned that aspect of the game around as well.
“Now, without Travis, we know that it takes all 22 or 48 guys to be able to play well because there isn’t just that one guy that can carry the flag,” Kramer noted.
With Lulay gone the starting quarterback role fell into the hands and feet of Cory Carpenter, who had been in the MSU program for three years. He’s expected to play Saturday, probably in a back-up role, after sitting out several games with an injury.
“He knows all the throws,” Kramer said of Carpenter. “He’s got a very quick release. He’s struggled at times at home not being able to be decisive in throwing the ball up the field.
“Throwing a lot of the check-down routes and a lot of the swing routes that … are completions but they’re not necessarily leading us to touchdowns,” Kramer went on.
Kramer chuckled a bit when describing Hawaii transfer and current starter Jack Rolovich as a “pure gunslinger, a pure never-met-a-throw-I-couldn’t-make type of quarterback.”
He said while Rolovich may not know all the nuances of the MSU offense, “he’s not afraid to try and stick it in there with a tremendous velocity.”
While the Bobcats have relied on different players from week to week Kramer has a pair of guys he’s been able to count on every week. They are offensive tackle Joe Hirst and linebacker Clive Lowe, both seniors.
Kramer described Hirst as “not necessarily flashy but a guy that gets the job done week in and week out.” Lowe, a fifth-year senior, missed some time after injuring an ankle two years ago but has “had a tremendous year this year without the kind of gaudy stats that maybe some other guys have.”
As for the Big Sky Conference race Kramer described himself as “pleasantly surprised” that Montana has been able to go through the conference schedule unscathed so far.
“With a very young team, with a new quarterback, losing Lex (Hilliard), not necessarily having the big, ferocious guys on defense” Kramer said, adding that the Grizzlies have responded well. “They play more guys than any other team in this conference on defense and on offense.”
Other league surprises for Kramer included a poorer-than-expected effort from Weber State quarterback Ian Pizarro and what he views as a less-than-expected season from Portland State, which is now hoping for a Grizzly win Saturday to propel the Vikings into the playoffs.
As for the Grizzlies, Kramer said it now appears that 400-yards-per-game passing efforts are a thing of the past. It’s something he says has developed through three coaches - Dennehy, Glenn and Hauck.
“If I was a Grizzly fan I’d still be wondering where those passing yards are,” Kramer said, “because that’s what the Grizzly nation became very, very accustomed to.”
Kramer said the reality since 1998 has been that Montana is a defensive team, “a team that likes to run the ball (and) control the clock. A team that likes to beat you any way possible with the kicking game.”
Kramer said when Hilliard went down coaches around the league probably thought Montana would falter, “yet they’ve found ways as a team - not to manufacture wins - but to continue their dominance of the conference.”
The Bobcat coach said even more amazing than the years of league domination that Montana has put together is the variety of ways they’ve found to do it.
To have a chance Saturday Kramer said his Bobcats have to play at the same level they’ve played for the past six weeks.
“We can’t be thinking about, oh, this is the Grizzlies and this is the Cat-Griz game,” Kramer explained. “For us this is just another step in trying to get back to where we thought we could be.”
Kramer said the Cats had hoped to go into this game already assured of a spot in the I-AA playoffs, but that hope was gone by the end of September.
“It’s not the Grizzlies we’re playing,” Kramer said. “It’s our own self because we can quickly fall into that three-loss team that we were in September.”
Early turnovers by either team could be huge, Kramer added. And he said the Bobcats cannot allow Montana’s kick-return units to fuel Grizzly momentum.
Kramer also said he thinks the rivalry has changed over the years for him and his team.
“The first couple of years … it was all about that number (the long Grizzly winning streak),” he said. “Now it’s settled into something different.”
Kramer doesn’t think the rivalry has meant as much to the Grizzlies in recent years as it used to because the playoffs have become the big thing in Missoula.
“They … always use this game as impetus into the playoffs,” Kramer reasoned. “While … it is a great rivalry game it means a lot more in terms of postseason. And really, in our program - now that that numbers thing got taken care of - our goal is to get into the postseason and be in a position … where you can win.”
Kramer said the Grizzly game is an opportunity for his team to show the nation how it can play against one of the top teams in the division.
“And the Grizzlies know - given last year’s set of circumstances - that regardless of how they play, they play at home on the first weekend.”
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