By Howard Tsumura
Varsity Letters
It was the kind of football game of whose finish the late, great sports painter LeRoy Neiman would have loved to capture.
We’re talking about late October football on the prairies and under Friday night lights… the kind of football which seems to inevitably come down to a late fourth-quarter comeback attempt, this time perhaps with the added brushstrokes of a gusting head-wind rolling in off the flatlands.
Well, all of those elements were actually in play in a kind of life-imitates-art moment this past Friday as the UBC Thunderbirds went into Regina not only looking for a win against the host Rams — one which would not only guarantee a home Hardy Cup opening-round playoff date in two week’s time — but as well keep alive its hope of a shot at capturing the Canada West’s regular season crown at home this coming Friday against the Saskatchewan Huskies.
And so with all of that on the line for a team that had shown measured growth in each of its six previous games, why not one with a finishing flourish worthy of a potential championship season?
Trailing Regina 17-14 with 5:22 left, swathed its figurative brush into autumn football’s palette of moods and proceeded to paint a 13-play, 75-yard scoring drive capped by a head-over-heels one-yard dive by running back Riley Michaud into the end zone, the signature on a collection of plays which have come to define the heart and soul of the 2026 ‘Birds (5-2), and one which ultimately led to a 21-17 victory over the Rams (3-4).
The grey-hairs amongst us could almost imagine Neiman with his trademark handlebar moustache and smouldering stogie standing along the sidelines of Regina’s Mosaic Stadium sidelines with his easel, his canvas and his brushes capturing, in his trademark abstract style, everything that is beautiful about a sport when an offensive line demonstrates an athletic, powerful and cohesive flair to the point of gravitational mastery.
Consider: Of the drive’s 13 plays, a statement-making nine of them came along the ground, including two on critical third downs as quarterback Drew Viotto, short-yardage QB/TE/FB Zach Patfield, and running backs Marvyn Larozar and Michaud all took turns carrying the mail.
And of those nine runs, all but one came the hard way: Between the tackles.
“It was a big… anytime you can show the resiliency and the courage to do what it takes to be successful, I think it shows growth and maturity,” said UBC head coach Blake Nill, well aware that everything still ahead for his team this season can be pivoted north off the backs of Friday’s finish.
“I’ve seen it so often where it’s just, you know, it’s too tough, too tough a chore, too big a task, and ‘You know what? We’ll settle for second best,’” he added. “And so for my guys to gut that out at the end I thought was an incredible sign. The emotion on the sideline was something I hadn’t experienced with this group for a long, long time. It was a different kind of emotion.”
HOW THE UBC GROUND GAME FOUND ITS IDENTITY
It’d be cliche to continually refer to the importance of the offensive line if it wasn’t such an inescapable fact, and in UBC’s instance, you need to look at the 2026 group through not only its eye test-passing ability to brings toughness and athleticism to the fore, but in the ways it has evolved not only since the passing of its former dean — Dan Dorazio — but both in the ways it has re-trenched under a new position coach in Peter Buckley, and how its competency has allowed both a superstar back and a cache of equally-important role-playing ones to carve out complimentary roles.
And to best address where the T-Birds’ offensive line has progressed to with one more game left in the regular season, you can do no better than going back to the biggest play of Friday’s game.
As a part of its eventual winning drive, on a first-and-10 from the Regina 20-yard line, you saw the right side of the UBC line seamlessly pulling at the snap of the ball.
There’s right guard Riley Scheffer gliding across the schematic to seal an edge on the left side, while right tackle Navjot Pooni has also cuts hard left but then accelerates into a perfect downfield block, the duo creating the perfect gap for Michaud to navigate on his way on a table-setting 13-yard run down to the Rams’ seven-yard line.
It’s one play in UBC’s total of 63 offensive snaps Friday, yet when you ask Nill about it, you realize immediately that it’s so much more than stand-alone social media highlight clip.
Through the head coach’s introspection, it was, in fact, an homage to the program’s recent past, and one that could serve as added inspiration heading into this Friday’s mega-clash at the stadium against Saskatchewan.
THE LEGACY OF ‘COACH DORAZIO’
In 2023, Dorazio, the legendary former B.C. Lions’ offensive line coach, returned to the Point Grey campus to assume the same position with the Thunderbirds.
Dorazio would pass at the age of 72 in August of 2024, yet when asked about the performance of his team’s offensive front on Saturday morning following the team’s return to Vancouver, Nill had his late friend on his mind.
“Throughout my career, my programs have always been built on the O-line,” Nill began. “That’s a place where we recruit heavily and coach Buckley is doing a great job with them. By no means am I comparing him to Coach Dorazio yet, but the year-plus coach Buckley had with coach Dorazio has really had an impact. You can see how (Buckley) runs a lot of the same terminology, a lot of the same drills. It’s like an extension of what coach Dan brought.. and now he’s putting his own personality into it, his own expectations with the athletes and they are responding to him. The O-line is still the strength of the program.”
With Caleb Cunningham and Pooni at the tackles, Tristan Montgomery and Riley Scheffer at the guard spots and Wolf Colavecchia at centre, along with other key rotational players like Jamin Dunn and Axel Statton, and with key jumbo personnel like tight ends Zach Patfield, Santiago Llarena and Ben Gutek it’s a group whose rise couldn’t be better timed from a UBC perspective.
RILEY TO THE RESCUE
Marvyn Larozar, who carried 19 times for 110 yards in Friday’s win, before leaving early on the team’s final drive after suffering what appeared to be a shoulder injury.
Larozar has been the unquestioned No. 1 running back for the ‘Birds, best reflected in the fact that he leads the nation in rushing (891 yards), rushing yards per game (127.3) and touchdowns (nine) in seven games.
Yet it is a testament to both UBC’s depth at the position and its overall team temperament and character that the team didn’t miss a beat when Larozar was forced to the sidelines.
Riley Michaud, the team’s 5-foot-11, 200-pounder out of Calgary-Ernest Manning had come into the season as UBC’s RB-1, and it’s to his credit that he never blinked when the rise of Larozar prompted what Nill admits was a logical change.
“Riley came in the start of the season when everyone thought he was gonna be the guy, right?” Nill said. “ Like, coaches included. But then when this Larozar kid shows up and you realize that, you know… it’s looked we made the right choice there, but to Riley’s credit, and I know it was tough on him, he hung tough. He changed to more of a special team focus, a situational player. And I mean, he’s a starting calibre back, right?”
Winning soothes so many ills, but as you listened to Nill, you understood how much better winning is when you have the kind of team buy-in and belief that a player like Michaud possesses.
“It’s just that, you know, he’s had to wait his turn and you know, who knows? You know how it works. There’s injuries, there’s who’s hot…”
THE TASKS KEEP GETTING TALLER
Important to note that UBC’s defence, once again, put force a great effort, allowing just one touchdown and keeping the Rams out of the end zone the entire second half. In their initial meeting, a Sept. 18 clash in Vancouver, UBC won 25-20 and didn’t allow Regina to score a point in the second half.
As well, the delicate balance between UBC’s pass game and run game seems to be thriving, and no better an example came over that decisive late-fourth quarter drive highlighted by completions of eight and 17 yards to receiver Trey Montour who finished with eight catches for 100 yards.
Viotto went 21-of-30 for 152 yards with a touchdown pass of four yards in the third quarter to Gutek to pull UBC to within 14-12.
All of that sets up Friday’s 6 p.m. regular season finale at Thunderbird Stadium against Saskatchewan in the Canada West’s true game of the year.
The ‘Birds rue a gaggle of mistakes which hurt their chances in a 34-24 loss to the Huskies back on Oct. 3 in Saskatoon, and with that 10-point loss they need would need to win by at least 11 to earn home field advantage through both rounds of Hardy Cup play.
“It’s a comfort thing for us, we have to be comfortable playing the University of Saskatchewan and the more we’re able to get on the field (against them) the more likelihood it’ll show that we can,” said Nill of the first-place Huskies (6-1), who this past Friday needed a 41-yard James Keane field goal on the last play of the game to beat last-place Alberta (1-6) by a 21-19 score. “At some point, we’re gonna put it all together. Now, it’s at our place, and you know, we’ve got a bit of a point-differential we’ve got to deal with, but it is what it is, man. We’re excited. We have the opportunity, and we’ll see if we can take advantage of it or not.”
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