BOZEMAN — Montana State has started the season 0-2, although the two losses have come from FBS powerhouse Oregon and FCS No. 2 South Dakota State in a double-overtime thriller.
"You could look at it two ways," Montana State coach Brent Vigen said about the team's start. "You could really have this sense of panic, or you could have this sense of urgency. Two different things in my mind.
"Panic kind of means you don’t see it moving forward. Urgency means we see it and we have to do this, this and this, to get where we want to go."
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The players have taken to that sentiment, as offensive lineman and captain Titan Fleischmann explained.
"We've got a lot of inexperience, I know for especially offensive line-wise, we’ve been shuffled around a little bit. And that’s no excuse, but for us as an offensive line, we've got to understand that the urgency needs to be turned up," he said. "We just have to learn at a faster rate. We've got to be able to learn as the game goes on."
MSU has had both highs and lows on special teams. Vigen expressed the frustration of having punts blocked two weeks in a row.
"I’d say this, it can’t happen again," Vigen stated. "We hadn’t had a punt blocked in four years, and we get two in two weeks. It hasn’t been a matter of snap and kick on either of them. We have two young players there in Brody (Johnson) and Colby (Frokjer). They haven’t been a contributing factor on those two blocks, so we've got to get it figured out. It’s really as simple as that.
"And the fact that we’ve punted 14 times in two games, that doesn’t help either."
San Diego of the Pioneer League comes to town with a 1-1 record, grabbing a ranked win against Southern Utah in overtime last week. Vigen mentioned what’s stood out most about the Toreros thus far.
"Last Saturday was a little bit more of a back-and-forth early, but they took charge, and you could sense they were more in control," Vigen said. "The nature of what they have at least aimed to do these first couple weeks is be balanced, take what the defense gives you, run the football."
The game kicks off at 1 p.m. in Bobcat Stadium and on your local Scripps Sports station.
