MISSOULA, Mont. – Furman football season died with its boots on.

Junior Bergen returned both a kickoff and a punt for touchdowns, and Clifton McDowell threw an overtime touchdown pass of 13 yards to Keelan White, and that’s why Montana defeated the Paladins, 35-28, in the quarterfinals of the FCS playoffs on Friday at Washington-Grizzly Stadium.

It was a rarity, a scoring battle between fine defenses.

Furman’s Tyler Huff miraculously kept the game going with a scoring pass with 13 seconds remaining in regulation.

On fourth down, Huff burrowed his way out of a snarling pack of Grizzlies and threw the ball into the end zone, where 6-7 tight end Mason Pline went up and got it.

The Paladins initially lined up to go for two points and the win, but a procedure penalty backed them up five yards and they settled for an Ian Williams kick and overtime.

Huff skewed his passing statistics for the season, hitting 16/47 passes for 188 yards, but his total offense of 241 yards – he rushed for 53 – was 85 percent of the team total.

Montana’s offensive standouts, with the notable exception of Bergen and lesser case of McDowell, had off nights, too.

It’s what happens when two teams both play defenses better than anything they’d seen.

McDowell passed for 208 yards and rushed for 118, but Montana (12-1) didn’t score a touchdown from its third possession to overtime.

Eli Gilman, winner of the Jerry Rice Award as FCS’s top freshman, rushed for two net yards in 10 carries.

Both teams largely abandoned the run, with the exception of McDowell and Huff scrambles, because of an inability to do it.

It took the Grizzlies 13 seconds to score. Williams didn’t quite get the opening kickoff into the end zone, and Junior Bergen ran it back the 99 yards available to him.

Suffice it to say, it was an inauspicious debut. Furman hadn’t allowed an opponent to score a touchdown on a kickoff return since Coastal Carolina in 2015.

A minute, 25 seconds later, on the Paladins’ third play, Huff took a hit and delivered a bomb, 70 yards up the middle of the field to Colton Hinton. Alternating extra-pointer Axel Lepvreau tied the score with the placement.

Then the Paladins forced a punt after one Montana first down. By then, a mere 10:37 remained in the first quarter.

After its first two possessions, the Grizzlies were averaging less than a yard a play. Montana had the return; Furman had the pass.

That is, until McDowell kept for 38 yards on Montana’s next play and followed with the necessarily remaining eight, with Nico Ramos’ kick, to put the Grizzlies up 14-7 with 6:44 remaining in the first.

It started snowing, and three plays later, Huff dashed 53 yards to tie it again. As Huff paused at the line, a massive hole opened, and he didn’t hesitate.

Ramos kicked a 39-yard field goal to put Montana ahead 17-14 on the first snap of the second quarter. The Grizzlies scored on their first touches in both periods of the first half.

Montana settled for a field goal again, a 28-yarder that hiked its lead to six (20-14) with 8:15 left in the half, but its defense increasingly established its authority as the clock ticked down.

Ramos missed a 42-yard field-goal attempt with 1:54 left, and Furman went to the locker room with a splendid defense needing its offense to relieve some pressure.

Poor field position and punting plagued the Paladins in the third quarter.

But the defense held. Then came the pick, Furman’s 18^th of the season. McDowell led Micah Robinson perfectly, and the Paladin cornerback took it all the way to the Montana 19.

Huff scrambled for one first down, shoveled to Anderson for another, and Roberto ran it in from the one with 6:22 remaining in the third.

Another Lepvreau extra point put Furman ahead, 21-20.

And Ramos missed another field goal, another 42-yarder, with 2:16 remaining, and the quarter ended with the Paladins guarding the one-point lead.

Ryan Leavy finally boomed a punt, and Bergen was back there again, and his 59-yard punt return, and a two-point conversion, put the Grizzlies up 28-21 with 9:40 remaining.

Then Huff and Pline intervened to keep the game going.

Furman (10-3) couldn’t answer after the Grizzlies opened overtime with a touchdown, and the game ended when Huff’s fourth-down pass to Kyndel Dean was broken up in the end zone by the Grizzlies’ Jaxon Lee.

Take a look at the stats here.

This will be updated.

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