Griz put finishing touches on fall schedule

The Montana soccer program, which set attendance records left and right last season while going 13-3-3 and winning the Big Sky Conference regular-season championship, has finalized its fall schedule.

It starts with the second Rumble in the Rockies – Iowa, Oregon State and Colorado College, anyone? – the first week of the season and ends with the Big Sky Conference Championship, which will be held at South Campus Stadium in early November.

The first Rumble in the Rockies, in 2022, brought Pittsburgh, Creighton and Gonzaga to Missoula. The second edition will be another circle-the-dates event.

Iowa went 13-5-4 last season, won the Big Ten tournament championship and advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament.

Oregon State needs no introduction, and Colorado College is one of the most historically significant programs in Division I women's soccer, advancing to the national semifinals or championship match five times in seven years in the 80s when women's athletics were first starting to emerge.

"High-level teams, just great for the community," said seventh-year coach Chris Citowicki, whose team attracted more than 7,000 fans to South Campus Stadium last season, an average of nearly 800 per home game.

Citowicki's Grizzlies ranked 54th nationally in home attendance, ahead of 26 Power 5 programs, boosted by a program-record crowd of 1,973 that watched Montana play to a 2-2 draw with Ohio State. "Hopefully everybody can get out there again and enjoy some good soccer," he added.

Montana will go right from the Rumble to its toughest nonconference road challenge, at Washington State, which has played in 11 NCAA tournaments since 2008, including a run to the national semifinals in 2019.

Montana's first three matchups against Washington State after Citowicki was hired in 2018 were losses by scores of 3-1, 5-1 and 6-0. The Cougars have been the standard Citowicki's program has been chasing ever since.

The teams' most recent matchup was a 3-0 Washington State win in the opening round of the 2021 NCAA tournament, a match that was a one-goal game into the 79th minute. The gap between the programs had closed. This fall, the next test.

This year's meeting will be on a Thursday night under the lights, four days after the opening day of classes in Pullman. Should be a festive environment against an opponent that averaged nearly 1,300 fans for its home matches last season at Lower Soccer Field.

"Fun to get them back on the schedule. It's been a while," said Citowicki. "To play them on a Thursday night in front of a big crowd, what more could you want?

"To have Oregon State and Washington State early on the schedule, what a start. It's going to test us right away."

Matches against MSU Billings and Fresno State follow before Montana hosts IUPUI on Sunday, Sept. 1, the type of match that won't be appreciated at first glance but will be a matchup of high-level mid-major programs.

The Jaguars went 11-3-5 last season and finished second in the Horizon League, ending the year with an RPI of 103, seven spots behind Montana's 96. "Another test to get us ready for the season," said Citowicki.

Montana will take a two-match road trip to Air Force and Wyoming before wrapping up its nonconference schedule with home matches against North Dakota, Boise State and Arkansas-Pine Bluff.

Boise State, which has averaged 12 wins per season since Jim Thomas was hired in 2013, went 11-4-6 last fall and finished third at 8-2-1 in the highly competitive Mountain West Conference.

With four Big Sky matches at South Campus Stadium, Montana will get 11 home matches in the regular season, which does not include the Big Sky Championship. Seven of the Grizzlies' 11 home matches will come on Sundays.

"We want to get people excited before conference play, get good attendance numbers, then carry that over through playoffs," said Citowicki.

Once league play arrives in late September, Montana will get Northern Arizona and Idaho at home in two of its first three Big Sky matches. Those two programs met in last November's Big Sky title match in Flagstaff, after the Lumberjacks knocked off the top-seeded Grizzlies in the semifinals.

Montana also will get Eastern Washington and Portland State at home. The Eagles, who played the Grizzlies to a 1-1 draw in Cheney, handed Montana, which went 7-0-1 in league last fall, its only non-winning result.

The six-team Big Sky Championship will have two quarterfinals on Wednesday, Nov. 6, two semifinals on Friday, Nov. 8, and the championship match on Sunday, Nov. 10.

It will be the first time Montana has hosted the league tournament since 2014, its fifth time hosting overall. The Grizzlies won hosting rights last season when they went unbeaten through league to finish six points clear of the rest of the field.

"Happy that we earned that last year, happy that we get to host it," said Citowicki, whose teams have gone 7-3 in Big Sky tournament matches. "I don't have any words for it. It's too exciting."

University of Montana Athletics

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