Shephard went on to implore Oregon State fans to fill Reser Stadium, as students begin to trickle back on to campus. The first official day of the fall semester at OSU is Wednesday, September 23.<\/p>\n
“I really wanna take this moment to speak directly to the fans: I won’t believe that we have our full team out there until we have the stands completely filled. At this point this game is so important guys…when you look at the schedule, we don’t have all of our students on campus until after this game. I’m really looking forward to seeing Beaver nation show up and show out this weekend.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
While the Beavers’ failed upset bid <\/a>this past weekend against Texas Tech showed promise in several areas, Oregon State’s rushing attack finished with 55 yards on 19 carries a week after netting only 26 yards.<\/p>\n \u201cI told you that we weren\u2019t gonna run all the same plays that we ran the previous week, and we did it. We\u2019ve got a lot of young, bright minds on this football staff, and I expect each and every one of them to bring ideas to the table,” Shephard said. “I believe that it\u2019s important for us to spread the ball around and have as many players on our football team involved in our game plan. And I think that we have done that\u2026now, running back gets hot, we\u2019re gonna turn around and hand it to him some more. So we just gotta get one of them hot.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n On the defensive side of the ball, Shephard also highlighted the promise of several of the team’s promising young players, notably freshman defensive back Blake Thompson.<\/p>\n \u201cBlake immediately jumped off the page during our fourth-quarter drills. He possesses athletic skill, speed, change of direction that was outstanding, we said \u2018this kid is gonna be a big-time play maker for us early on. And then you find out that he really actually hadn\u2019t played the position that much, and that is common across the board when you look at our cornerback room specifically, and that\u2019s what you noticed about Blake right away. I\u2019ve been challenging Coach Brumfield and telling him \u2018it\u2019s on him to teach Blake how to play the position of corner at a high level.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Oregon State and Montana square off this Saturday, September 19 with kickoff scheduled for 8 p.m. PT\/11 p.m. PT on the USA Network. The Grizzlies are 3-0 to start the season and are ranked No. 2 in the FCS Coaches Poll.<\/p>\n “Really good football team,” Shephard noted. “On defense they fly around and they bring a lot of different scheme, so we’re going to have to be prepared for all that they bring. They have a couple linebackers who are tenacious players, and then on offense they kinda do it all really well. They got a running back who is over 300 yards rushing,<\/a> quarterback throwing for over 250 yards a game. So we’re gonna have to do everything really well on our side of the ball.” <\/p>\n
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