I saw the sign

HARDIN COUNTY, Tenn. - High atop Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga on Friday afternoon, just hours before the Griz would lose to James Madison, I stumbled across one of those you-can't-write-this-stuff coincidences while visiting the Civil War memorials in Point Park.

One of the winding trails in the park leads to something called the Ochs Museum.

Hmm. Montana's quarterback is Craig Ochs, here is an Ochs Museum, there has to be some way I can tie the two together, and with the help of Flathead Valley Griz fans Bryan Donner and Rick Stevens, I discovered how.

On a digital thermostat display inside the museum read the following: "OCHS NOT READY."

Talk about your omens.

And while it didn't exactly apply to Craig Ochs, who threw for a career-high 371 yards in his college swan song, it certainly was a harbinger of doom for the Griz.

These are the kinds of things you think about when you wake up at 7 a.m. after getting to bed sometime after 2 a.m. and embark on a four-hour drive from Chattanooga to here and your mind starts to wander away from things like the speed limit and stop lights.

And as I wound through the southern Tennessee back roads toward Carroll College's NAIA title game with St. Francis, Ind., my thoughts turned again to Friday night and the Grizzlies.

First off, lead pipe cinches aren't what they used to be, obviously.

(As an aside, in college I once made a similar prediction of certain success for Oregon State only to see them trail 45-0 at halftime. I explained that one away by claiming I wrote the prediction column while whacked out of my mind on a nasty combination of several drugs. I don' think they'll let me do that here, though. Sorry if I got your hopes up only to see them crushed like the first runner-up at the Miss America pageant)

The way James Madison dominated the line of scrimmage was shocking. The Griz had played so well on defense the last several weeks, for them to get manhandled like that was unfathomable to me before the game.

But for all the improvements Montana made, you can't coach size. You can scheme in an attempt to minimize your disadvantage, but if the guys on the other side of the ball are bigger and stronger, there just isn't a lot you can do.

Griz coach Bobby Hauck made a prescient statement Thursday when he was asked how to counter JMU's physical nature.

"Spend a lot of time in the weight room in the offseason," he said.

And that's really the only answer to what happened in the title game. Montana did not play poorly, except maybe when it came to running the football. The Griz were just outplayed by a team that was, on that night, better.

It's important to remember that this is an awfully young team, especially on defense. Give the young players a chance to hit that weight room, apply what they learned this season in spring drills and fall camp, and allow them to get better. Because they almost surely will, and they'll get better the year after that, too.

Right now for the Griz, their success next year depends on two things - the offseason development and maturation of their young players, and finding capable replacements at quarterback and at receiver. Ochs, his backup Jeff Disney, wideouts Levander Segars, Jefferson Heidleberger, Tate Hancock and tight end Willie Walden all graduate.

It's a concern, yes, but a 10-year stretch of dominance in the Big Sky and five trips to the title game don't happen without the ability to replenish the talent pool with regularity. Have faith, Griz fans.

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Andrew Hinkelman is a sports writer for the Daily Inter Lake. He can be reached at hink@dailyinterlake.com