Montana Outlasts Southern Utah Despite Getting Outrun 259-74
Southern Utah ran for 259 yards. Montana ran for 74, on 17 carries. Montana won anyway, 28-21, which is a sentence I enjoy writing.
Montana did it with big plays. Keali'i Ah Yat found Eli Gillman for 85 yards on Montana's first scoring play, and Gillman added a 29-yard run in the second quarter for a 14-3 lead. Ah Yat's own 3-yard run made it 21-9 in the third. Southern Utah had only a 50-yard Jayden Rogers field goal and a 6-yard Floyd Chalk run to show for all that yardage by then.
Then the fourth quarter. Will Burns hit Joshua Acord from 13 yards at 14:56 (the two-point run failed) and from 58 yards at 11:41 (the extra point was blocked), and it was 21-21. Those two scores came in a span of just over three minutes. Ah Yat settled it with a 53-yard touchdown to Lekeldrick Bridges at 3:14, and Southern Utah never scored again.
Southern Utah finished with 510 total yards to Montana's 338, on 49 rushes to 17, and still lost by a touchdown. The failed two-point run and the blocked extra point matter here: make both and Southern Utah leads 24-21 before Bridges scores. Montana's 17 carries for 74 yards are the reason the two long throws, 85 and 53 yards, mattered so much. Montana is 1-0. Southern Utah is 0-1, and it will not be the yards that bother them.
For fantasy, Burns ran for 119 yards on 15 carries and threw for two scores, and he was the top scorer of the day.