Howling in Havre

For much of the 2018 Frontier Conference season, the Montana State University-Northern Lights were not prone to committing turnovers. And in their last three games, the Lights had also gotten off to really good first-quarter starts.

However, in their final game of the season, the opposite happened to the Lights on both accounts.

On Northern's senior day, the Lights committed four first-half turnovers, and could only watch as 24th-ranked College of Idaho scored 42 unanswered points in the first 30 minutes in what turned into a 59-28 win for the Yotes inside Blue Pony Stadium. The win was C of I's sixth straight, while the Lights finished the season at 0-10 in the Frontier for the second straight year, as well as 1-10 overall.

And turnovers were a big, big part of the story. With light snow falling inside Blue Pony Stadium, Yotes turned a Tommy Wilson interception into a Nick Calzaretta touchdown run to lead 7-0. Then, trailing 14-0, Wilson threw a pick-six with :58 left in the first stanza, and things snowballed from there.

"This is a really good football team," Northern head coach Andrew Rolin said of C of I, which finished 6-4 in the Frontier. "So you can't expect to commit four turnovers in the first half against a team like that and still have much of a chance to win. You just can't do that, you can't play as poorly as we did in the first half against a team that is as talented, playing as well as they are right now."

No doubt, the Yotes made the Lights pay for the first-half struggles. They scored three straight times in the second quarter, including two more scores off of Northern fumbles, and were about to take a 42-0 lead into intermission. That was, until Wilson threw an 18-yard touchdown pass to Bryce Bumgardner on an un-timed down to end the first half. The drive started after the Yotes scored with just :13 left. Northern got two big chunk plays, and a personal foul at the quarter gave Northern its last shot at the endzone.

The play proved to be crucial for the Lights too, as they desperately tired to fight back in the second half, which they did.

"I challenged our guys in the locker room to go out and win the second half," Rolin said. "And we did that. Our guys never stop fighting. Resiliency and effort is not this team's issue. I was proud of the way we fought in the second half."

The momentum the Lights had at the end of the first half carried into the third quarter, as Wilson threw a 63-yard touchdown pass to Keagan Stroop, and Jett Robertson scored on a 4-yard run. That cut the C of I lead to 49-21 at the end of the third, and while it wasn't going to be enough, Wilson added a 27-yard TD to Bumgardner on a fourth-down play in the fourth quarter to cut the margin to 56-28. C of I would tack on a Kyle Mitchell field goal, but certainly the Lights showed the heart they've showed all season long, especially Wilson, who rebounded from a rough start to finish with 223 yards and three touchdowns to go with 19 yards rushing in his last game as a Light.

"Very proud of our seniors," Rolin said. "They have given a lot to this program. They gave us everything they had."

The Yotes also gave the Lights everything they had. Star quarterback Darius-James Peterson was as advertised, throwing for 177 yards on 11-of-15 passing, while also rushing for a game-high 159 yards on just seven carries. As a team, the Yotes rushed for 316 yards and racked up 502 yards of offense on just 69 plays. Defensively, Justin Pfeifer had nine tackles and a tackle for loss for the Lights, while Caymus Thomas had nine stops and Jaren Maki tallied seven tackles and a sack.

On the other side of the ball, Northern got 69 yards from Robertson on the ground, while Bumgardner had 141 yards on seven catches and two scores. The Lights tallied 330 yards of offense, including 106 on the ground. The Yote defense was paced by David Ford's nine tackles while Tristen Alesi had six tackles and an interception for a touchdown.

While Saturday's game was a tough way for the Northern seniors to go out, it was also the end of the first season under Rolin. The Lights opened the year with a promising win over Mayville State but still struggled to catch up to the Frontier Conference. Yet Rolin sees plenty of positives in where his young program is headed, and how they played in the second half against the Yotes Saturday is a clear indication that the Lights, indeed, did make progress this fall.

"We're a young team, we played a lot of freshmen this season, and those guys got better and better as the season went on," Rolin said. "We made a lot of progress, we got better every week. Now, we need to go into this offseason ready to take the next step. We want to take a big step forward next year, and I believe we will. I saw us get better and better throughout the season, and we will continue to do that. We will get there."

The End

Lights finish 0-10 in the Frontier, 1-10 overall

Lights Notes: Bumgardner's big day caps off a great sophomore season in which he finished with 871 yards receiving. Stroop's touchdown was the first of his career. The Lights were down yet another starter Saturday as cornerback Damien Nelson suffered a season-ending injury two weeks ago at Carroll. The Yotes scored 28 points in less than seven minutes in the first half. C of I has now beaten the Lights five straight times. With the Yotes ranked in this week's NAIA Coaches Poll, the Lights wound up playing eight games against teams that spent time in the poll this season.