By Howard Tsumura
When you’ve marched out the kind of young core that the 2025 UBC Thunderbirds have this season, on both offence and defence, and you’ve made a commitment to keep those student-athletes engaged in that day-to-day, game-to-game development space, you have to expect that the downs may initially outweigh the ups.
Yet while the process invites every trope and cliche in the book, the bottom line is that in an ideal world, patience and belief is eventually going to render hackneyed phrases like ‘youth being served’ and ‘trial by fire’ as obsolete.
There is no gauge or metre designed to predict when that precise moment will arrive, yet maybe what transpired late Friday afternoon at Leibel Field in Regina was indeed that very moment of reckoning for a team which had suddenly found itself in a place where its next mistake would ultimately be its last.
“Those tight wins can change so much cause you realize your potential when you are pushed to the breaking point and you actually succeed instead of losing,” UBC head coach Blake Nill explained after the Thunderbirds (3-5) rallied from the brink of a 15-point deficit with under two minutes remaining to extract a miraculous 31-29 overtime over the host Regina Rams (6-2) in the Canada West regular season finale for both teams.
The skin-of-its-teeth victory insured UBC the conference’s fourth-and-final Hardy Cup semifinal playoff spot and sends the Thunderbirds to Saskatoon this Saturday where they will once again be cast as underdogs as they attempt to stun the No. 1-seeded Huskies. Regina will face the Manitoba Bisons in the other semifinal.
Just how dramatic was UBC’s comeback?
With 2:39 left and no timeouts remaining, the Thunderbirds trailed the Rams 28-13.
As he stepped in to bark out the signals, UBC’s prodigious first-year quarterback Drew Viotto was staring into the depths of a third-and-10 from his team’s own 35-yard line, knowing that failure would in all likelihood render an instantaneous end to his team’s season.
Yet on what could best be described as a down-and-distance of pure desperation, a UBC team which had on too many past occasions frittered its chances away, somehow summoned every molecule of perfection the moment required, sparking from that moment forward a chain reaction which resulted in the single most significant experience the team has shared this season.
Against a team that came into the game with first place in the conference still within its grasp, UBC not only converted twice on third-and-10, it managed a two-point convert it had to have, and also successfully executed one of the strangest on-side kicks you’re likely to see.
Without each and every one of those plays and maybe a half-dozen more, the chance to dream the dream of playoff possibilities would have been stopped cold in its tracks.
“That was the breaking point, and we were at that same breaking point three weeks ago in Manitoba and we lost it, right? reminded Nill of the way UBC rallied from a 28-3 halftime deficit to the Bisons to take a 31-28 lead midway through the fourth quarter, only to surrender a late score in a 35-31 setback.
COACH NILL FINDS THE PERFECT COMPARISON
Blake Nill never has to think too hard to be able to find a moment from either his playing or coaching past from which to theme a post-game address to his entire team.
Friday was no exception.
“Here’s what I told the kids after the game,” Nill related Saturday morning back in Vancouver.
“When I was in Calgary, in 2007, so it was my second year there,” Nill said of what would stretch into a nine-year run at the helm of the Dinos, “we had a game in the middle of the season, playing Saskatchewan in Sask. We were competing a lot better in Year 2, and we went in there and we won (20-19) on a last-second field goal.
“It was quite an upset at the time,” continued Nill, who a season earlier had taken over a program with a 2-6 conference record the previous year. “We made the playoffs that year (losing in the Hardy Cup semifinals to a Manitoba team on its way to the Vanier Cup title).
Why did Nill tell his players that story?
“Because the next season we won our first of six straight Hardy Cups,” he said.
None of that is going to mean a lick next weekend in Saskatoon, yet it’s dangerous to downplay the kind of dynamic energy generated by the kind of UBC vs. Everyone victory that it’s triumph in Regina is sure to bring to its locker room.
VOILA! VIOTTO TO MONTOUR! UBC’S FUTURE COMBO HAS ARRIVED!
It’s not so easy to top Friday’s win in terms of most meaningful victories ever.
Yet to be clear, ultimate respect must be given to the ‘Birds six-play, 95-yard game-winning drive in 2023 which began with 52 seconds remaining and was capped by a 13-yard TD pass from Garrett Rooker to Sam Davenport, and subsequent walk-off extra-point by kicker Kieran Flannery-Fleck in a 28-27 Hardy Cup championship game win over the Alberta Golden Bears at Thunderbird Stadium.
On the ‘Birds eventual road to that season’s Vanier Cup national title game, the stakes were infinitely higher.
Yet if you want to talk degree of difficulty, quarterback Drew Viotto had to pull so many more rabbits out of his hat to make this past Friday’s victory possible.
“The thing about Drew is, technically he is very good, character-wise he is tremendous and his understanding of the game is exceptional,” Nill stated. “He doesn’t get rattled very easily.”
For a Canadian player who hadn’t played Canadian football since his days as neophyte to the sport, had hoped to get a chance to establish himself at two NCAA Division 1 programs, and who endured a benching for one game in Week 3 earlier this season, the last part of Nill’s assessment is unequivocally true.
And without pulling out a calculator, it’s a pretty safe bet to say that Viotto’s productivity over the past three games can match any UBC quarterback in program history over the same span.
In games against Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Regina (the top three seeds in the Hardy Cup playoffs), the 6-foot-3, 230-pound native of Sault Ste. Marie has gone 81-of-127 (64 per cent) for 1,202 yards with seven touchdown passes against three interceptions.
By comparison, Viotto went 65-of-108 (60 per cent) for 782 yards with five touchdowns against one interception over the team’s first five games.
On Friday, as part of his 34-of-52 for 423 yards and three majors and one pick, Viotto helped receivers Trey Montour and Shemar McBean break the 100-yard mark in catches.
Montour caught 11 passes for 157 yards and two touchdowns, while McBean had nine catches for 134 yards and a score. Edgerrin Williams-Hernandez was also prominent, especially late, making seven catches for 72 yards.
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE CATCH
Since the start of the season, the fifth-year McBean has been using his blazing speed to shrink the field, and on Friday he continued to perform like the veteran cornerstone player he is.
Montour?
For one who seems to ooze grit and down-to-down toughness, he seemed on Friday to transcend any previous moment of his UBC career, maintaining more an even keel from snap to snap, thus giving the ‘Birds a feeling of near invincibility in the late moments of that fourth quarter.
We start at the game’s turning-point play, the aforementioned third-and-10 from the Birds’ 35-yard line where it was Montour going over the middle to catch a 16-yard pass from Viotto at his own 51-yard line.
UBC’s first of two pivotal scoring drives also happened to feature another third-and-10, this one from the Regina 43-yard line with 1:56 left.
On that occasion Viotto threaded the needle into triple coverage with a dart that just eluded Rams’ fourth-year linebacker Ryan Mills and was snared in clutch fashion by Montour, the 6-foot-2, 212-pound second-year out of Ancaster, Ont.
That gave the ‘Birds a first-and-10 at the Regina 22-yard line, and Viotto finished the drive off with a touchdown pass to McBean. An Alexander Hillyard PAT pulled UBC to within 28-20 with 1:40 remaining.
What happened next, for UBC fans, must have seemed like a sure sign there team was playing with destiny on its side.
The teams lined up for the expected onside kick, and Hillyard, a rookie from Jacksonville, Fla., who has been filling in for injured veteran Flannery-Fleck, wound up drilling his kick into Regina’s Mills.
The ball ricocheted right back to Hillyard, who fell on it at the UBC 47-yard line with 1:36 left.
“When we line up to (onside) kick we have a number of options based on what we get… whatever the other team gives us, we try to take advantage of it,” began Nill. “We have kicks that go everywhere on the field but he wasn’t trying to carom it off (Mills),” said Nill. “But it went (to the area) where it went because that’s where we thought was our best chance to get the ball.”
On some days, on some plays, nothing can go wrong.
Taking over for a potential game-tying drive at its own 47-yard line, Viotto first managed back-to-back completions with Williams-Hernandez, then connected with Montour who wisely stepped out of bounds at the Regina 42-yard line to stop the clock with 1:08 remaining.
Kai Rednour-Bruckman, seldom used this season, made a huge 21-yard gain to move the ball to the Rams’ 21-yard line with 54 seconds left, setting up the game’s most dramatic offensive snap.
Viotto dropped back, stepped up into the pocket and found Montour making a crossing pattern towards the boundary side where two defenders had him lined up.
Montour caught the ball at the 15-yard line within what amounted to triple coverage, put a move on Colin McKellar, juked past Kaeden Brennan before somehow managing to keep his composure, his balance and the ball as he was drilled by a Regina player at the goal line before breaking through into the end zone for the major score with 42 seconds remaining. Watch the film and you can see McBean providing a clean runway by blocking his man and helping Montour find his way to the end zone.
UBC flawlessly executed the two-point convert, as Viotto found Montour in the front of the end zone to tie the score at 28-28 and force overtime.
In the first overtime, hard-hitting UBC halfback Tyson Lewis made perhaps the biggest tackle of the day when he took down Regina’s fifth-year receiver Rylan Sokul on a second-and-two, limiting the Rams to no gain and prompting a 35-yard field goal attempt that was subsequently missed by kicker Ty Gorniak.
The single made the score 29-28 Regina, but UBC came right back to answer when Montour’s eight-yard reception put UBC in position for what would be the game-winning 31-yard field goal by Hillyard.
Now, it’s on to Saskatoon for a 1 p.m. Vancouver time kick-off this Saturday.
Between a preseason game which was aborted before its conclusion due to weather, and two previous regular season meetings, there is not a lot that is going to surprise UBC as it attempts to pull off what would be the biggest upset of its season against the Saskatchewan Huskies.
“This is the fourth time we have been on the field together (three at Griffiths Stadium) and nothing is going to change,” said Nill. “We know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s going to be a matter of execution, health and having players ready to play at the right time. I’m sure we’re both banged up by this point. We just go out there next Saturday and try to make plays.”
The formula UBC players had this past Friday in Regina was undoubtedly no more complicated than that.
And they know better now than they Friday that right about the time all of those old cliches start to disappear, is right about the time that you begin to realize that the battle before you is one in which you now truly belong.
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