Griz close out nonconference with Broncos, Bison

The Montana soccer team will wrap up its nonconference schedule this week with matches against Boise State and North Dakota State.

The Grizzlies (2-2-4) will face the Broncos (3-2-2) in Boise at 5 p.m. on Thursday at the Boas Soccer Complex, then return home to host the Bison (4-2-2) at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday at South Campus Stadium.

Boise State will be Montana's fourth opponent from the Mountain West Conference this season. The Grizzlies played to ties with Wyoming, Colorado State and Fresno State.

Montana will begin Big Sky Conference play next week with matches at Sacramento State and Portland State.

At a glance (Montana): The Grizzlies played to a pair of draws last week, tying 0-0 on the road at Colorado State and playing to a 1-1 deadlock against Fresno State at home on Sunday.

Against the Bulldogs, Montana went up 1-0 in the 79th minute on Maysa Walters' first goal as a Grizzly. Fresno State tied it in the 90th minute, with Montana just 53 seconds from victory.

Montana outshot both opponents and has outshot seven of its eight opponents to date. Over the last two weeks and four matches, the Grizzlies have generated 29 corner kicks to their opponents' six.

Delaney Lou Schorr leads Montana in goals scored with four. Eight other players have each scored one goal. Walters lead the Grizzlies and the Big Sky Conference with four assists.

Camellia Xu collected the shutout at Colorado State, giving the sophomore four on the season, 15 for her career, which already ranks fourth in program history.

At a glance (Boise State): The Broncos are coming off a successful 11-win season that saw them make a run to the Mountain West Conference tournament championship match.

The No. 6 seed, Boise State defeated No. 3 San Diego State 1-0 and got past No. 2 Fresno State in a shootout in the semifinals before falling 2-1 in overtime to No. 1 New Mexico in the title match.

(In Boise State's 1-0 regular-season loss at New Mexico, the Lobos won it with a goal in the 63rd minute. Assisting on the goal was current Grizzly Maysa Walters.)

Boise State, with one first-place vote, was picked third in the Mountain West preseason poll behind New Mexico and San Diego State.

The Broncos' losses this season have come at home against Arizona State, 2-1, and at Oregon State, 2-0. Boise State has wins over UC Riverside, 4-1, Oregon, 3-1, and CSU Bakersfield, 5-1.

The team's wins over Oregon and CSU Bakersfield came on the road. The 3-1 win over the Ducks came in a match Oregon had a 19-9 advantage in shots, a 12-1 advantage in corner kicks.

Thursday's match will be Boise State's first at home since Aug. 28.

The Broncos have been shut out just once this season, at Oregon State, and have four players who have scored multiple goals, led by freshman forward Hayden Wilsey, who has five on just seven shots.

Series history (Montana-Boise State): Montana leads the all-time series with Boise State 9-5-1 and hasn't lost to the Broncos since 2008.

The Grizzlies are 7-0-1 against the Broncos since then, with all seven wins by one goal. The teams' last four matchups have resulted in 1-0 Montana victories.

Montana is 4-2 against the Broncos in Boise with four straight wins, 2-1 in 2009, 3-2 in double overtime in 2011, 1-0 in 2012 and 1-0 in 2017.

Thirteen of the teams' 15 all-time matchups have been decided by a one-goal differential.

In the teams' tightly contested match last fall in Missoula, Montana came out on top 1-0 on Delaney Lou Schorr's first career goal on a corner kick from Bella O'Brien.

At a glance (North Dakota State): The Bison went 3-12-1 last season, finishing eighth out of 10 teams in the Summit League with a 3-6-0 mark.

North Dakota State was picked ninth in this year's preseason poll, ahead of only North Dakota, but has already surpassed last season's win total.

The Bison defeated Utah Tech and Chicago State in St. Paul, then last weekend picked up 1-0 home victories over Green Bay and Drake.

In between those 2-0-0 weekends was a rough trip out west. NDSU lost 3-1 at Wyoming, the Cowgirls' only win to date, and 5-0 at Big Sky favorite Northern Colorado.

The delightfully named Paige Goaley, a junior forward, leads North Dakota State with two goals and one assist. The Bison have used three players in goal through eight matches.

North Dakota State opens its two-match road trip with a game on Friday night at Big Sky leader Idaho, which is off to a 5-1-1 start.

Series history (Montana-North Dakota State): The teams have met five times previously, with the Bison holding a 3-1-1 advantage.

The teams' only meeting in the last decade was a 1-1 draw in Fargo in 2019. The teams have not met in Missoula since 2011.

The teams' other results have all been lopsided: NDSU won 3-0 in Missoula in 2005 and 4-0 in Missoula in 2011, with a 3-0 win in Fargo one week later.

Montana's lone win was 3-0 at home in 2006, with Meghan Chambers scoring two of her six career goals.

Summary:

Another week, another set of challenging matches for Montana.

Remember those first two weekends of the season, with matches against Creighton, Pittsburgh and Portland? Those teams are currently 16-1-7.

Montana tied Creighton and had competitive losses against Pittsburgh and Portland. Plus, it's been three draws against Mountain West Conference opponents.

"I feel like we've played well against the teams we've faced. To play the way we did and generate the chances we did on Sunday against Fresno, it's no longer that Montana defends well and maybe scores on a counter," said fifth-year coach Chris Citowicki.

"We're generating more looks than most teams we're playing against, so I'm really excited how we're doing there. I think we're going to be more than ready for Big Sky play when it gets around to that."

Montana has had two wins this season, a 6-0 blowout of MSU Billings, a match the Grizzlies led 5-0 at the half, and two days later against CSU Bakersfield, a 3-0 win that had Montana outshooting CSUB 20-4.

Montana had a chance to pick up its first signature win of the season on Sunday against Fresno State, the team picked fourth in the Mountain West preseason poll and last year's regular-season runner-up.

After Montana controlled the opening 30 minutes, the match was back and forth until Walters broke the 0-0 tie with a pretty goal in the 79th minute.

The Grizzlies were on their way to victory until the Bulldogs scored their own bang-bang-bang goal with 53 seconds left to deflate South Campus Stadium's joyous mood.

"It burns your soul, and the more it burns, the more you learn from it, so I want it to burn pretty deeply," said Citowicki, whose team hadn't been in the position of holding on to a late lead this fall.

"Closing out games is something we're normally good at, but we decided to keep possession a little bit longer. It turns into the throw-in, they end up scoring from the throw-in and there you go.

"I'll take full responsibility for that one. It's something we haven't talked about yet. We'll learn from it and it won't happen again."

After winning just one of 11 matches against opponents from the Mountain West and West Coast conferences through his first four years, Citowicki's fifth team is playing as much more of an equal.

"A few years ago, if you'd told me we'd go on the road and tie a Mountain West team, then we'd come home and tie Fresno at home, I would have been, that's great, awesome," he said.

"It's nice to be in a position where people look at us playing Mountain West teams and say, wow, we should have beat them. We had the opportunities."

The draw on Sunday was somewhat softened when the highlight of Walters' goal started going viral that evening. (It's at nearly 17,000 views as of Wednesday afternoon.)

Ava Samuelson played a ball across the box that Kayla Rendon Bushmaker tracked down on the right side. She redirected it to the front of goal, where Walters was with a defender on her inside.

So, Walters hopped, let the ball go under her, then heel-flicked it with her outside foot past a surprised Fresno State goalkeeper.

There were other options available, but a routine shot would have either been blocked by the sliding defender or saved by the goalkeeper, so Walters had to dig into her bag of tricks, which she did on the fly.

"I'll mess around at practice and kind of do that as a joke," she said. "It ended up being right place, right time and intuition. I couldn't get it on my left, so I put it on my right and it ended up working out well.

"Kayla played a great ball in. To be able to put one away was exciting. To be able to finally do that and contribute to the team was really fulfilling."

As Citowicki watched the views of the clip go up and up and up on Sunday night, he could only shrug. It was beautiful, maybe close to perfection, but it was still just Maysa being Maysa.

"When you see her doing it every single day, it's no surprise," he said. "It's something you'd expect out of a player of that caliber who has the ability to intuitively do that.

"She didn't think about it. She just knew that's what she needed to do in that moment. We've got a couple kids on the team who can do things like that right now. Put them in the right spots and hope they do something magical, and that's what she did."

After two more tests this week, it will be on to league. First at Sacramento State and Portland State, then home for four straight matches over three weekends. Then two on the road, then playoffs.

"I'm extremely excited with what we have here," Citowicki said. "I know (league) is going to be much more difficult than it ever has been, but we're more prepared than we ever have been and the confidence level is extremely high."

Around the Big Sky Conference:

* Idaho took over the top spot in the standings when the Vandals defeated Louisiana and UC Santa Barbara at home last weekend in two shutouts to improve to 5-1-1. Idaho's final nonconference match will be on Friday night at home against North Dakota State.

* Preseason favorite Northern Colorado (4-2-2) had been unbeaten through three weekends but lost twice last week in Virginia, falling at James Madison 2-1 and at Virginia Tech 5-2. The Bears had allowed only two goals through their first six matches before giving up seven to the Dukes and Hokies.

* Northern Colorado plays at Washington State on Thursday night.

* Like Idaho, Eastern Washington (3-3-2) also picked up two home wins last weekend, defeating North Dakota 1-0 and Louisiana 4-1.

* Portland State (1-4-3), Idaho State (1-4-2), Northern Arizona (0-4-2), Weber State (1-6-0) and Sacramento State (0-5-2) have just two Division I wins between them while getting outscored collectively by 47 goals.

* On Thursday, in addition to Montana playing at Boise State and Northern Colorado playing at Washington State, Sacramento State gets its shot at No. 22 Washington at home and Weber State hosts Gonzaga.

* On Sunday, Northern Colorado hosts a good Utah State team, Eastern Washington plays at Boise State and Idaho State hosts Gonzaga.

Upcoming: Montana will open its Big Sky schedule with a road trip to Sacramento State and Portland State next week.

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Players Mentioned

Bella O'Brien

Kayla Rendon Bushmaker

Ava Samuelson

Delaney Lou Schorr

Maysa Walters

Camellia Xu

University of Montana Athletics