Apr. 12—MISSOULA — The Montana Grizzlies' annual spring game featured perfect weather, a respectable crowd and more than its usual amount of fireworks Friday.
When the 82-play scrimmage ended, barely 75 minutes had passed and there had been five touchdowns at Washington-Grizzly Stadium — two of thrown by Jake Jensen, the senior transfer quarterback from Southern Cal.
The Grizzlies were split into Maroon and Silver, and Maroon (Jensen's team) won the scrimmage 24-20. It was novel for Bobby Hauck's team to go with the intrasquad approach with the seniors drafting two teams. It could explain the big plays.
Or it could be because the Griz need to replace every defensive starter from last year that the average play covered more than 6 yards.
"This is usually the worst practice of the year in terms of what we get done," Hauck said afterward. "But I thought it was pretty good competition today.
"It was kind of fun to see offense and defense cheering for the same team instead of it being offense versus defense."
It was entertaining and possibly even illuminating. Jensen looked sharp, completing 14 of 20 passes for 142 yards, though Hauck spit the hook when asked about the three quarterbacks that threw Friday: Jensen, Keali'i Ah Yat and Luke Flowers.
"I didn't even watch them," he said. "I was watching the front."
The front, with Whitefish's Dillon Botner playing a ton of snaps at center for Maroon, opened up gaps. Eli Gilman had a 16-yard touchdown run for the Maroon, while Stevie Rocker, Jr. And Browning's Tommy Running Rabbit each had eight carries for a total of 74 yards.
On the Silver team, Eastern Washington transfer Michael Wortham tore off a 33-yard end-around; Talen Reynolds, wearing the 34 jersey that his dad Chase excelled in from 2008-10, had five carries for 25 yards.
Silver took two leads: 3-0 on a 50-yard field goal from Ty Morrison, and 20-14 when Flowers found 168-pound freshman Brooks Davis for a 69-yard touchdown on the first play of the second half.
Maroon erased the first gap with a 2-yard screen play from Jensen to senior receiver Drew Deck, capping a 13-play, 65-yard drive.
Deck, a Glacier High product, a had four catches for 34 yards and is suddenly an elder statesman with the graduation of receivers Junior Bergen, Keelan White and Aaron Fontes.
What the Griz kept was a lot of speed: Lekeldrick Bridges, another freshman middleweight (162 pounds), had four catches for 59 yards.
On the Silver team freshman Cameron Gurnsey had two catches for 36 yards and sophomore Jordan Dever had four for 71.
"They're a good group of young kids," Deck said: "I learned a lot from those older guys and definitely miss having them around. But these younger guys had a good spring, I thought, and it was fun. It was fun to get out and cut it up a little bit."
Back to the 20-14 Silver lead: Jensen's second TD went to tight end Jake Olsen covering 6 yards late in the third period and put Maroon up 21-20. Late in the fourth, Brayton Boyer hit a short field goal to cap the scoring.
Flowers, the redshirt freshman out of Rigby, Idaho, quickly threw passes covering 9 yards to Gurnsey and 20 yards to Monte Gillman, Eli's freshman brother. Then his next pass was picked off to seal the outcome.
It was the second pick for Flowers; the first went to Dawson Johnson, a sophomore from Canada who wasn't on the roster handed out to reporters at Monday's practice.
A few of those guys showed up Friday. Kaleb Shine, another Glacier product, went through winter conditioning and is listed as a freshman linebacker.
The work isn't done for the Griz and their coaches.
"We've got transfer recruiting," ...
