| 12 December 2008
These two teams met in 2004 when James Madison clinched the school's first national title with a 31-21 win over Montana in the championship game. In this game it was built as the brawn of Montana against the speed of James Madison.
Traveling three-fourths of the way across the country and playing the #1 team in the FCS seemed like a insurmountable task for the Grizzlies, but they took advantage of sloppy play by the James Madison Dukes, and hung on to win 35-27 in the first FCS semi-final game this weekend.
Unfortunately for the Dukes, they lost quarterback Rodney Landers early in the game with an ankle injury. If that wasn't bad enough, they gave the Grizzlies great field position with two fumbles in the first half. Chase Reynolds was a beast running the ball for Montana while Cole Bergquist did an adequate job running the offense in the first half. Reynolds had 2 rushing and 1 receiving touchdowns and in the second half, Bergquist was 8 for 8 with a pair of touchdown throws and some key runs that helped Montana in their 21 point 3rd quarter.
Obviously turnovers were the big story of this game, but the Grizzlies stopped the Dukes on 4 consecutive plays inside the 5 yard line with 10 minutes to go in the 4th quarter but then 4 plays later the snapper put the ball over the punter's head and JMU was within two scores.
The Dukes didn't waste time after the free kick. They drove down the field and Drew Dudzik made a nice run for the Dukes to score, his second touchdown run of the night. James Madison went for two and Dudzik ran up the middle again, did a flip and the ball just broke the plane of the endzone after replay review to get the two point conversion. For those who didn't see it, imagine Sam Bradford's helicopter on the sideline, only better.
Montana will face the winner of the Richmond at Northern Iowa game which will be played on Saturday at 4pm on ESPN.
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