Griz back home, seeking breakout performance

The Griz soccer team will host its second nonconference tournament of the season this weekend when it welcomes Idaho, North Dakota and Vermont to South Campus Stadium for the Montana Invitational. The tournament will be held on Friday and Sunday.

The schedule:

Friday, Aug. 31
2:30 p.m. -- Idaho vs. North Dakota
5:30 p.m. -- Montana vs. Vermont

Sunday, Sept. 2
10 a.m. -- Idaho vs. Vermont
1 p.m. -- Montana vs. North Dakota

At a glance (Montana): The Grizzlies, who have scored just one goal through 270 minutes of match time, are still seeking their first victory of the season. They lost to Fresno State and San Francisco at the season-opening Montana Cup, both by shutout, and dropped a 3-1 decision last week at Arizona State.

At a glance (Vermont): The Catamounts, at 0-2-1, with all three matches coming at home, are also seeking their first victory of the season. Vermont is coming off a nine-win season that saw them playing in their first America East tournament championship match last fall (a 2-1 loss to Stony Brook).

At a glance (North Dakota): The Fighting Hawks are 2-0 after traveling to Louisiana two weeks ago and shutting out both Nicholls State and Southern by a combined score of 7-0. Add in UND's two exhibition wins and it has outscored its opponents in August by a score of 14-2. The team was off last weekend.

At a glance (Idaho): Like Montana, the Vandals are under a first-year coach (Jeremy Clevenger) after their former coach (Derek Pittman) headed south to Texas-San Antonio. Idaho is 1-2 and defeated Grambling 3-1 in its most recent outing, on Friday in Moscow.

Upcoming: Montana will face its first two-match road trip of the season next week when the Grizzlies travel to face Wyoming on Friday and UNLV on Sunday.

Montana insider:

The Grizzlies needed more than 204 minutes to score their first goal of the season and have yet to collect a win, but they are close, tantalizingly so, to breaking out offensively.

"Every game we're getting closer and closer, and now we're just talking about tiny details. It isn't about big concepts anymore," said first-year coach Chris Citowicki.

A visitor to Citowicki's office earlier this week could have watched video from Thursday's 3-1 loss at Arizona State and been left to wonder which team, exactly, was more dangerous, the Grizzlies or the Sun Devils.

It was so easy to see on the screen, all the missed opportunities that were so close to being there but came up one element short.

"Our movement up front is perfect. We're looking for the right spots and spaces, but it's one second too late every time," he said. "We take two touches when we need to take one touch. We're taking one extra dribble when we should have played it earlier. Everything was just a little off.

"And you have to be on against a team like that. You have to be perfect, and we were close to being perfect so many times in that game, which really gets me excited. We're that close. We're just adding pieces to the puzzle until everything falls into place, which is hopefully soon."

It was a trip that started with a destination of Hawaii, for matches against the Rainbow Wahine and the Sun Devils. Hurricane Lane changed all that and forced both Montana and Arizona State to cancel their travel plans and seek out an alternative schedule.

Montana got the better of Arizona State in the opening moments in a match delayed more than 90 minutes because of weather, but it was the Sun Devils who scored first, using a one-timer off a cross in the 22nd minute to go up 1-0.

It took the Grizzlies less than three minutes to answer. Montana turned the ball over deep in ASU's end, but Ellie Otteson was right where she was supposed to be, and she was able to deflect an attempted clearing pass into the goal for the eighth score of her career.

After another 30-minute delay because of lightning, Arizona State took the lead for good, going up 2-1 in the 34th minute off a Montana turnover. The Sun Devils added a third goal in the 67th minute.

Montana, which used just two subs in the match, got outshot but created more corner kicks than Arizona State. Claire Howard made a career-high eight saves.

"For us, this week and next week is about playing at the same level and the same intensity we saw in that match," said Citowicki. "That level has to be there every single game. If we can maintain that, we should get some good results."

Scouting Vermont: The Catamounts are coming off a 9-9-2 season, giving them a .500 record two times in the last three years, the first time the program has accomplished that since the late 90s.

They now move forward in coach Kristi Lefebvre's eighth season with a young team, with 16 underclassmen on a roster of 22.

Vermont opened the season by playing American to a 2-2 draw. Last weekend, the Catamounts lost 3-2 to visiting Saint Mary's in double overtime, then got shut out for the first time in 2018, 2-0 by Marist.

Senior Aly Spencer, who transferred to Vermont after spending two seasons at Holy Cross -- she was the Patriot League Rookie of the Year in 2015 -- has scored a pair of goals this season.

Vermont was picked to finish sixth out of nine teams in the America East preseason coaches' poll.

"They are very possession-orientated, similar to us," said Citowicki. "They like to play it out of the back and through the middle.

"They have some speed up front, a senior captain on the back line who's a solid defender and a strong midfielder who can pull strings and really make things happen. It's a dangerous team. They can definitely hurt you if you don't show up to play."

Scouting North Dakota: How good are the unbeaten Fighting Hawks? No one really knows for sure, probably even their own coaching staff.

Sure, they beat Nicholls State and Southern on the road on opening weekend, but Southern finished the 2017 season with an RPI of 331 -- out of 333 teams -- and didn't win a match last fall. Nicholls State wasn't much better, checking in at 305.

Even preseason opponent South Dakota, which UND defeated 2-1, had a season-ending RPI of 308 last year.

Thankfully Citowicki knows plenty about the Fighting Hawks. He was UND's associate head coach last season, his only in Grand Forks, and he brought Danielle Mendez to Montana after she also spent one fall at North Dakota.

That will give Sunday's match an added dynamic.

"I'm getting chirped, which is awesome," said Citowicki. "I love those relationships. It's playful, but they're showing up to win. They're coming out with the goal of beating us and sticking it to me and Danielle.

"They are going to come out extremely organized, because Chris Logan is a very good coach, and they'll have a good game plan."

Citowicki was only at North Dakota for a little more than a year. He was named associate head coach in March 2017 and helped Logan earn Big Sky Coach of the Year honors last fall. Citowicki was named Montana's coach in May.

He has a deeper connection than that with some of North Dakota's players, including forwards Cassie Giddings and Olivia Knox, both freshmen, who played club for Citowicki when he was coaching in the Twin Cities at St. Catherine.

Giddings and Knox both scored a pair of goals in North Dakota's exhibition matches. Giddings was one of six Fighting Hawks to score as they opened with a pair of road wins.

"They have some really good freshmen who are dangerous and have been scoring some goals," he said. "They both played for me in club for multiple years, so it's going to be fun seeing them. I know they want to stick it to me as well."

Montana notes:

* The Grizzlies lost both of their home matches to open the season, which snapped the team's 12-game unbeaten streak at South Campus Stadium.

* Montana's 0-3 start is its first since 2009.

* The Grizzlies will be playing their first-ever match against Vermont on Friday.

* Montana will be playing North Dakota for the 11th consecutive season on Sunday. The Grizzlies are 8-2-0 against the Fighting Hawks, 6-0-0 in Missoula.

* Montana has won those six matches in Missoula by a combined score of 19-2, but the last two matchups at South Campus Stadium have been tight. The Grizzlies won 1-0 in overtime in 2016, 2-1 last season. Those came after UND's 2-1 win in Grand Forks in 2015.

* Claire Howard has played all 270 minutes in goal this season, as has Taryn Miller at one center back position. Taylor Hansen has missed just four minutes, when she ran herself ragged in the season's opening weekend and had to come out due to sheer exhaustion late against San Francisco.

* Nine of Montana's 11 starters played all 90 minutes in the Grizzlies' loss at Arizona State.

* Redshirt sophomore Kennedy Yost has taken a team-high eight shots through three matches.

* Montana no longer has a junior on the team, just five seniors and 21 underclassmen. And one of those seniors (Janessa Fowler, named the Big Sky's best player in July by Top Drawer Soccer) has yet to see the field this season in a match.

Around the Big Sky Conference:

* Northern Arizona, at 3-1, has a league-high three wins through two weekends. Since opening the season with a road loss at Portland, the Lumberjacks have won three straight, including a pair of overtime victories last weekend, at home over New Mexico State and on the road at Grand Canyon.

* Eastern Washington, at 2-1-1, is the only other league team with multiple wins, but it's a sketchy body of work. The Eagles needed overtime to get past Cal State Bakersfield (RPI 283), then defeated Grambling State, another Louisiana team with a low RPI, 2-1 in Cheney on Sunday.

* Weber State (0-1-1), Idaho State (0-2), Sacramento State (0-3-1) and Montana (0-3) are all seeking their first victories of the season.

* Southern Utah had one of the season's best victories for the Big Sky on Thursday, 2-0 at home over a UNLV team picked to finish fourth out of 12 teams in the Mountain West. The Thunderbirds scored twice in the first nine minutes and made 10 saves while getting outshot 18-9.

* On Friday, Sacramento State played to a 2-2 draw on the road at Fresno State, a team that won 1-0 at Montana, and Weber State tied 0-0 at home against Nevada, a team that went 1-18 last season and was picked last in the Mountain West preseason poll.

* Two days later, Nevada won at Southern Utah 2-1 even though the Thunderbirds finished with a 16-8 shots advantage. Go figure.

* Game of note this week: Boise State, picked third in the Mountain West preseason poll with a pair of first-place votes, plays at Big Sky preseason favorite Eastern Washington on Friday.

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Players Mentioned

Janessa Fowler

Taylor Hansen

Claire Howard

Taryn Miller

Ellie Otteson

Kennedy Yost

University of Montana Athletics