Montana State routs William & Mary, 55-7 to reach FCS semis
AP
Dec 10, 2022
BOZEMAN, Mont. (AP) Tommy Mellott ran for three touchdowns and threw for a fourth and Isaiah Ifanse ran for 162 yards and two scores as Montana State drilled William & Mary, 55-7 in a Football Championship Subdivision quarterfinal game on a 17-degree Friday night.
The Bobcats (12-1) advance to the semifinals and a potential rematch with South Dakota State, which faces Holy Cross in a quarterfinal match-up Saturday. Montana State knocked off the Jackrabbits, 31-17 in a semifinal matchup in 2021 and advanced to face North Dakota State for the national title before losing.
Mellott spearheaded an offense that posted 473 yards of total offense, 328 of it on the ground. Montana State's defense forced William & Mary to punt 10 times and the Bobcats' punt-return squad had 143 yards and a touchdown on a 79-yard return by Taco Dowler.
Mellott scored the game's first touchdown on the final play of the first quarter, skirting the left end and racing 22 yards down the sideline to make it 10-0. After holding the Tribe to a three-and-out, Ifanse raced 68 yards untouched to the end zone to make it 17-0. Ifanse, who missed the entire regular season with an injury, had 153 yards in the first half and became the all-time leading rusher in Montana State history.
Blake Glessner kicked a pair of first-half field goals, including a 50-yarder in the second quarter.
Marqui Johnson took the kickoff to start the second half and raced 87 yards before slipping on the frozen turf at the William & Mary 9 and Infanse need one play to get into the end zone to make it 34-0 20-seconds into the second half.
William & Mary (11-2) avoided being shutout with a 10-play, 84-yard drive capped by a 2-yard run by Bronson Yoder with 3:11 left.
Yoder finished with 122 yards on 26 carries to lead the Tribe, who finished with 135 yards on the ground. Darius Wilson was 7 of 18 passing for 62 yards with an interception.
--
More AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/college-football and https://twitter.com/ap-top25. Sign up for the AP's college football newsletter: https://tinyurl.com/mrxhe6f2
Copyright 2025 STATS LLC and Associated Press. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC and Associated Press is strictly prohibited.
This page provides an overview of our use of cookies and similar technologies (from here we will refer to all those as “Cookies”) and how to manage them. For more information please visit our Privacy Policy.
When you visit our properties and use our products and services (“Services”), we use Cookies to analyse and measure our performance, customize content and serve personalized advertisements. We may place our own Cookies (First-party Cookies) or allow our service providers to place Cookies (Third-party Cookies) on your device and collect information such as your device ID, browser type and IP address so they can help us better understand your interaction with our Services. Advertisers and other advertising technology partners may also use their own third-party Cookies to collect information about your visits, deliver advertisements tailored to your interests, keep track of the number of views of a specific advertisement, analyses the effectiveness of advertisements, or provide auditing, research and reporting for advertisers. Such third parties may also match you to an existing interest category (e.g. automobiles) that they’ve developed and provide you with more relevant advertising over time and across different websites.
When you click on save settings below, your preferences will be saved. You can change your settings at any time by using the consent settings module. Note that saving settings is linked to the particular browser and/or device you use to visit our Services. Saving your settings within one particular Service will not affect your choices on other Paramount Services, or if you visit this Service with another device or from a different browser. In addition, it won’t affect any of your activities on third-party services. You have other choices to manage cookies and other tracking technologies on the internet such as using industry choice programs or managing your preferences within your browsers or devices. For more Information refer to our Privacy Policy.
Essential
Always Active
These cookies are essential for the proper functioning of our Services. Essential cookies cannot be switched off in our systems. You can set your device to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the Service will not work.
Analytic & Performance
Always Active
These Cookies allow us to collect information about how visitors use our properties. Some examples include counting visits and traffic sources, so we can measure and improve the performance of our services. If you do not allow these Cookies we will not know when users have visited our properties and will not be able to monitor performance.
Functional
Always Active
These Cookies enable the services to provide enhanced functionality and personalization. They may be set by us or by third party providers whose services we have added to our services. If you do not allow these Cookies then some or all of these services may not function properly.
Marketing and Advertising
Always Active
These Cookies may be set by us or through our services by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant advertising on this and on other properties. If you do not allow these Cookies, you will still see ads, but you will experience less relevant advertising.
Social Media
Always Active
These Cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the services to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites, building up a profile of your interests to show you relevant content and advertisements on the relevant social networks. If you do not allow these Cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.
![[object Object] Logo](https://sportshub.cbsistatic.com/i/2020/04/22/e9ceb731-8b3f-4c60-98fe-090ab66a2997/screen-shot-2020-04-22-at-11-04-56-am.png)
