By Howard Tsumura
Varsity Letters
VANCOUVER —OK, quick… which sounds shorter: 3,274 days or eight years, 11 months and 17 days?
If you had a feeling they were exactly the same, you’re right. But by now, you must be wondering what in the wacky world of UBC football could possibly have lasted that long?
Well, that’s the length of time it’s been since the UBC Thunderbirds last went into Saskatoon and beat the Saskatchewan Huskies in a Canada West football game of either conference or playoff variety.
On Saturday (6 p.m., CanadaWest TV), a Thunderbirds team riding a three-game win streak and freshly minted as U SPORTS’ No. 7-ranked team heads east to Griffiths Stadium to face the No. 5-ranked Huskies in a winner-take-all battle for first place in the conference standings between a pair of 3-1 teams.
And the one thing you don’t have to do is remind UBC head coach Blake Nill, now in his 12th Point Grey season, that his team hasn’t won at Saskatchewan in almost nine years. It’s been eight straight losses since his team went in and extracted a 29-25 victory back on Oct. 14, 2017. On that day it was the ‘Birds quarterback Michael O’Connor passing for 466 yards and three touchdowns, and receiver Trivel Pinto having a party with 13 catches for 156 yards.
“When you’re trying to supersede a program, in this case we’re trying to catch Sask, we’re trying to show we can compete with Sask, and until you can beat them on their home turf, that is the true indication that you’re ready to join the big leagues with another team,” summed Nill, whose teams have gone a healthy 5-4 against Saskatchewan at Thunderbird Stadium over his tenure, but have experienced famine-like conditions in the central farmland with a meagre 2-9 harvest at Griffiths Stadium. As well, the two teams have met in a combined five Hardy Cup championship semifinals and finals since 2015, wth the Huskies winning all five. Does UBC need anything more for motivation Saturday?
WHY NOT NOW?
You don’t want to ever say there is a perfect time to face head coach Scott Flory’s Saskatchewan Huskies, yet if the UBC Thunderbirds had a to pick a time, then why the heck not this week?
There are numerous reasons why:
*The ‘Birds are entering the second half of their conference season on a three-game winning streak in which their past two wins have come as the unranked underdog against nationally-ranked foes.
*Last week, UBC beat No. 10 Manitoba 31-6 in Winnipeg, the ‘Birds first win at the Bisons since 2018, snapping the team’s second-longest active road drought of the Nill era.
*UBC’s defence has not allowed a field goal or a touchdown over past six quarters, and defensive coordinator Noah Cantor has schemed up a winner with his group. The Thunderbirds enter play with the No. 4-ranked defence in the nation, best in the Canada West allowing a stingy 17.0 ppg. Last season, the ‘Birds defence allowed an average of 30.6 ppg, finishing 20th out of 27 teams.
*The chemistry and the bond of the current 2026 group seems to share some budding karma with the 2021 post-pandemic group, especially from the perspective of its Year 1 and Year 2 players.
The 2021 team included first-years like Garrett Rooker, Jason Soriano, Isaiah Knight of the Edmonton Elks, Ryan Baker of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Dane Kapler, Aidan Bertuzzi and holdover vet Riley Scheffer, and second years like Theo Benedet of the Chicago Bears, Giovanni Manu of the Detroit Lions, Max Kennedy, Eric Dika-Balotoken and Mitch Townsend.
This year’s baby ‘Birds include first-years like Marvyn Larozar, Tahliek Louis, Josh Martin, Derek Durand, Ben Gutek, Santiago Llarena, and second-years Drew Viotto, Jehovany Batalonga, Bruce Jones, Cole Pryputsch, Isaiah Thomas, Jamin Dunn, Wolfe Colavecchia and Kai Rednour-Bruckman.
WHY TWO SNAPS CAN BE A MIRROR TO THE SOUL
There is a danger, from the perspective of a team just beginning to gain momentum on the national stage, to roll out anything even resembling a red carpet just yet.
Saturday’s weather forecast for Saskatoon seems about as non-partisan as any party of travelling Vancouverites could expect for the first weekend of October on the prairies: partly cloudy, 11 degrees with a five-to-20 per cent chance of rain. Yet the UBC football team is still not at the stage where their footing on any stage, figurative or not, is fully assured.
And that’s the theme we will espouse over the final moments of this game preview… how above all else a win in what might be the toughest park in Canada won’t come without a season’s peak in focus and toughness.
To that end, the Blue and Gold lived up to the theme last Saturday, turning a tight 2-2 game in the second quarter into a decisive victory which vaulted the ‘Birds from the anonymity of the nation’s unranked to No. 7 in the country.
In actuality it’s a really simple story with symmetry so precise that you almost wonder if the football gods themselves figuratively plucked a Thunderbird’s feather, dipped its shaft in ink, and proceeded to pen a prophetic script of resilience over everything.
On the first of back-to-back snaps in the second quarter against Manitoba, as part its first of three straight touchdown-scoring drives to the half, receiver Trey Montour made a 16-yard catch on a second-and-16, moving his team to the 55-yard line but in the process taking what looked to be a helmet-shot to the ribs from hard-charging Manitoba cornerback Alex Klenk.
Montour, who held onto the ball for what was only a two-yard gain, was smarting and winded. He took a knee, was attended to by the trainer and eventually was able to leave the field under his own power.
On the very next snap, UBC receiver Owen Herle was lined up wide to the far side of the field, and on the snap of the ball ran a shallow cross, looking back over his shoulder to pull in a pass from quarterback Viotto.
That pass eventually came, but when it did, Herle was lit up by Manitoba linebacker Dario Macchia who might have made the most devastating and impactful tackle of the season.
Herle was helicoptered by the hit, but despite the ‘oooh’ and there ‘ahhs’ which accompanied the so-called ‘hospital pass’, he was only briefly attended to by trainers and was able to jog off the field.
“Herle is an old school player, right,” Nill said after the game, his pride drenching each word. “I told them that Drew should take him out for dinner for that (hospital pass). But Herle is tough as hell and that stuff gets noticed by the pros, right?”
Now, this drive had some other highlights, including incredible blocking/protection by tight ends Gutek and Llarena and centre Colavecchia on an 82-yard pass-and-run to the Manitoba two-yard line from Viotto to sublime, fast-rising receiver Rednour-Bruckman. The completion, however, was wiped out by a holding penalty, yet the drive was still capped off by a seven-yard off-tackle touchdown run by Larozar to make it 9-2.
That drive also featured such common, run-of-the-mill everyday occurrences as a 6-foot-5 pure freshman rookie tight end (Llarena) fresh off a four-down B.C. high school career football running the waggle to perfection, turning a dig route into an on-the-money 26-yard catch from Viotto, all accomplished while looking like a seasoned Canada West veteran. (Apologies got a little excited there).
The story here centres on Montour and Herle.
On the very next drive, Herle silenced anyone who might have had the thought that his equilibrium had been compromised by the previous hit he’d taken when he caught the entire Manitoba defence by surprise, getting himself wide open on the sidelines and hauling in a 17-yard scoring strike from Viotto for a 16-2 lead.
Then, on UBC’s next possession it was Montour’s turn.
If those ribs were sore, he wasn’t showing it because after Viotto faked a handoff, he spotted his favourite target in the far corner of the end zone and found him with a perfect strike in-between the coverage of Bisons’ halfback Carter Dallas and corner Marcus Wahl for an eventual 25-2 halftime lead.
The parable? It was about so much more than three touchdowns (and a conceded safety) within a game-changing span of 3:13 on the game clock late in the second quarter. It was about the shared reaction which was revealed after the punishment which Montour and Herle took on those back-to-back snaps… a kind of gridiron echocardiogram that had a grizzled football heart doctor like Nill smiling with approval.
That chart would have showed two of UBC’s best players answering the bell with a one-two touchdown punch of their own, especially Herle’s.
“He will be sore,” assured Nill who does not have a single player on his entire roster who has experienced a win in Saskatoon. “He’s already sore and he’ll be sore for days, but he’ll be in there when kick-off happens at Sask.”
If UBC needs to take anything into Saskatoon on Saturday, it’s that very mindset… the understanding that your feet are being held to the fire.
No matter how much the game changes there is always that… the thing that can happen to a team when belief begets confidence. In the end, no matter what team you’re talking about, it’s the only thing that matters, and that will never change.
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