Nov. 26, 2006

Final Stats

Missoula, MT - McNeese State dropped a 31-6 decision to Montana on Saturday in the opening round of the NCAA Division I Football Championships.

The Cowboys managed only to score a pair of field goals by sophomore Blake Bercegeay in the game. They did score the first points and were down only 10-6 until the final seconds of the first half.

Montana, which came into the game as the nation's No. 2 ranked team in 1-AA, held leads of 7-3 at the end of the first period, 17-6 at the end of the half and 31-6 at the end of both the third quarter and the game.

McNeese completed its season with a 7-5 record, 6-2 under Matt Viator in his first year as the head coach.

"We got beat by a better team today," Viator said following the contest. "I'm very proud of our team. We had a good year and I'm looking forward to starting it up again next year."

A 42 yard field goal by Bercegeay, who made both of his attempts in the game and ran his consecutive field goal string to 11 (only one shy of the McNeese record and two off the Southland Conference mark), produced the game's first points after the Cowboys had taken the opening kickoff and driven to the Montanan 25.

Tailback Chris Thomas, playing in his final collegiate football game, ran for 21 of the 75 yards while quarterback Derrick Fourroux, who broke a bone in his wrist midway the fourth period, connected on four passes for 35 yards.

Montana, which is now 11-1 and has won 11 straight games, scored on its first possession with Josh Swogger connecting on a 50 yards pass to Dan Beaudin and never relinquished the lead.

Bercegeay would connect from 38 yards out to cap a McNeese drive early in the second period. That drive started at the McNeese 37 after Stephen Barrett had intercepted a Grizzlie pass.

An 11 yard pass from Fourroux to tight end Kyle Link was a big play in that drive.

Montana came right back to score on a 22 yad field goal by Dan Carpenter.

The Grizzlies would also tally on a 14 yard pass from Swogger to Eric Allen, on an eight yard and an 11 yard pass from Swogger to Craig Chambers.

For the game, Swogger hit on 18 of 26 passes for 259 and all four Montana touchdowns.

McNeese's Fourroux was gone on 12 of 20 tosses for 116 yards.

The Grizzlies ran for 230 yards with T. B. Fletcher getting 113 on 13 rushes while McNeese totaled 99 with Thomas getting 56 on 10 rushes.

Steven Whitehead led the Cowboys in receptions with six catches for 66 yarsd and Bercegeay had one of his better games punting, posting a 47.2 average on six punts.

Although it snowed in the early morning, the game was played under blue skies and a crowd of 20,077 was in attendance. It was the largest crown for a first round game at Montana's WAshington-Grizzly stadium.

Defensively for the Cowboys, linebacker Allen Nelson recorded a game high 13 tackles and Bryan Smith recorded a sack and ran his school single season record to 13.5.