Glacier travels to Great Falls to face Bison; 1st road trip in a month

The Glacier football team is warming up the bus for the first time in a month, riding a four-game win streak into Great Falls High tonight.

The No. 5 Wolfpack has been near flawless since starting the season 1-2, and is looking to parlay that momentum into a high playoff seed. Since losing to Helena on Sept. 7, Glacier has beaten its opponents 177-37, scoring at least 50 points three times.

“I think we’ve made progress in all three phases of the game,” Glacier coach Grady Bennett said. “To us, this is the next step. We just have to play better this week. Across the board we want to be a better team than we were last week.”

To keep improving this week, the Wolfpack will have to get around the massive front line of Great Falls. The Bison are led by senior offensive lineman Cody Vanvoast, who at 6-foot-7, 265 pounds, is a task to move around. Lane Urick (6-1, 280), Joe Moody (6-0, 225) and Justus Bushong (6-2, 280) will also look to make an impact in the game.

“They are huge up front, they just have mammoth guys on both sides of the ball,” Bennett said. “It’s going to be tough to move those guys straight forward. We’re going to have to do a little more misdirection and things like that. They are really big.”

The Wolfpack will try to get the ball to its speedy receivers on the outside, where they’ve excelled the last few weeks. Six different receivers caught the ball in each of the last two games.

“Hopefully we can use it to our speed advantage,” Bennett said. “They have the size, we have the speed. We’ll try to play to that a little bit.”

Glacier is also looking to maintain its dominant play on defense, where it has forced 15 interceptions and three fumbles in the last month, entering Friday with the top scoring defense in the state.

“Defensively, they’ve played so well, it’s a matter of continuing to do what they’re doing, hawk the ball and make big plays,” Bennett said.

The Wolfpack is wary of a trap game as it heads on the road for the first time since a smoke-delayed trip to Missoula and Polson in early September. Bennett said the early losses have strengthened his team from overlooking its opponents.

“Now just how driven, how motivated they are each week to get better and still try to obtain the top one or two spots and play a home game (in the playoffs), that’s something we’re not worried about at all,” Bennett said.

“We’re just going to try to get better and play hard.”

Tonight’s kickoff is set for 7:30 at Memorial Stadium.