Travis Jonsen
Photo by: Garrett Becker
NOTES AND QUOTES: A look at Montana State's 49-31 Win over NAU
9/28/2019 6:40:00 PM | Football
Another impressive rushing day paces the Bobcats
* Travis Jonsen rushed for 105 yards on Saturday, his career high, becoming the sixth different Bobcat to rush for at least 100 yards in the first five games of 2019.
* Montana State rushed for 340 yards on Saturday, and in the last two games has gained 789 yards on the ground (110 carries). That happened without starting running back Isaiah Ifanse playing in either game.
* Junior linebacker Troy Andersen scored his third touchdown of 2019 on a two-yard run, giving him 29 rushing touchdowns and 30 total TDs in his career. He's now tied with Don Hass and Chad Newell for second place on MSU's career rushing touchdowns list.
* After Northern Arizona scored on a 46-yard field goal with 11:28 remaining in the third quarter, Montana State scored the game's final 35 point.
* The Bobcats rushed for 244 yards after halftime.
* There were no sacks in Saturday's game.
MONTANA STATE COACH JEFF CHOATE
On the first-half deficit: "(The halftime speech) wasn't anything special. I wish I could lean on that. But the bottom line is a lot of self-inflicted wounds in the first half. The pick-six gave them some early momentum, Case Cookus made some ridiculous throws, (Hendrix Johnson) went up and made a couple crazy catches, you look up at the scoreboard you're down 21-0… But as usual, keep cutting wood, carrying water, doing what we do, and we… were able to close this thing out in pretty dominant fashion at the end."
On Northern Arizona: "Credit Northern Arizona, they had a good game plan. They moved some guys around a little bit that we hadn't necessarily seen up to this point in time. They had a good scheme to take away our core run game early."
On the ability to come from behind: "We've been there before. A bunch. Our guys don't flinch. College football is a really, really long game, tons of momentum swings. They had the momentum early. They certainly came ready to play. But I tell our guys every week, everyybody can play hard for a while. If we can get the thing into the second half, fourth quarter, we can find a way."
On Travis Jonsen: "He's a really good football player, and we need to get him his touches. Sometimes we can't get him them through the air, so we had to find another way."
On Jahque Alleyne's punt return that set up a touchdown: "It was big. We talked about that, in each game we've won we got a big special teams play."
OFFENSIVE GUARD LEWIS KIDD
On the offense picking up steam in the second half: "Coach Armstrong said (at halftime), 'We're not going to change anything, we're going to keep running our DNA stuff, and those little-chunk plays, those one-, two-yard plays, turned into five, six, seven, big runs. So just trusting that and continuing to pound the rock like we do and trust ourselves, that was the biggest things."
SAFETY BRAYDEN KONKOL
"We're a second-half team, that's our strong suit. Eventually we're going to play a full game, but we definitely pride ourselves on being finishers. We definitely wore them down, offense and defense. We definitely know we're going to win those games. We don't necessarily know how, but we know somebody's going to step up and make a play."
Players Mentioned
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