Bisons Season Comes To End

They got help, but couldn’t help themselves. And as a result the University of Manitoba Bisons football season has come to a sudden stop.

The Bisons were mauled 55-21  by the Regina Rams Saturday night in what was their final regular season game of the 2016 Canada West campaign at Investors Group Field.

The loss, coming in a game in which they had to win – and get help from the Calgary Dinos, who knocked off the UBC Thunderbirds 41-35 in overtime – dropped the Bisons to 3-5. And it means that for the first time since 2011, the Bisons will not advance to the postseason.

There should be an asterisk to all this, as those who have followed the Bisons this season are fully aware. Manitoba used 46 different starters this past season after getting absolutely crushed by injuries. They lost 11 starters with an assortment of hurts and, as if that wasn’t bad enough, had 24 players quarantined for the mumps in the the last three weeks.

“I’ve coached 42 years and I said it to them, I’ve never ever – whether it’s high school, university, pro – been in a situation where a team had such tough times,” said Bisons head coach Brian Dobie. “We had so many injuries and we’re not a professional team where if somebody goes down it’s a professional athlete taking his place. It’s a high school kid coming off redshirt. It’s tough.

“We had 46 different players start this year and I pointed that out to them. That’s the bad news. The good news is we had 46 different players start in this locker room… almost our entire team returns next year. We don’t lose many players and the experience we’ve gained and the opportunities that were taken advantage of by back-up players, young kids, those are all lessons learned.

“The world is filled with silver linings and that’s certainly one of them. The carnage is over and the recruiting season has officially begun.”

The Rams were led, as they have been all year, by quarterback Noah Picton, who completed 27 of 39 passes for 447 yards and three touchdowns while also running for another score. In the process, he also set a new Canada West single-season passing record by throwing for 3,174 yards – 12 more than Calgary’s Andrew Buckley did a year ago.

Atlee Simon pulled in all three of Picton’s TDs and also rushed for another himself, while Riley Wilson caught an 81-yard TD from Tyler Vieira, as the Rams piled up 673 yards net offence.

Manitoba’s TDs – all after the Rams had built a 41-0 lead – came courtesy Macho Bockru and Jesse Walker on passes from Des Catellier and a Chris Friesen one-yard run.

A pair of Bisons did cap of stellar individual campaigns, as quarterback Theo Deezar eclipsed Jordan Yantz’ 2013 Bison record for single-season passing yards by reaching 2,544 this year.

“Obviously right now it’s not seen as a personal success for me,” said Deezar. “It’s tough to lose like that… they did a really good job today taking away the throws that we like.

“I heard Coach Dobie say we officially had over 20 guys quarantined for the mumps… that’s pretty crazy alone. Before that whole mumps thing we had lost 11 starters from Week 1. It’s been a wild season, but I give the guys a bunch of credit. They persevered. Young guys have stepped up and that’s great for the future of the Bisons.”

As well, linebacker DJ Lalama set a new single-season tackle record by adding 10 to his total of 72. That broke Joey Mikawoz’s record of 65, set in 2000.

“I’m not one for excuses, this team isn’t one for excuses,” said Lalama when asked about the long injured list. “You can add up the man-games lost, you can add up how many guys we had out there in different rotations… we were kicked out of our own locker room so they could sanitize it.

“The list goes on and on of obstacles and adversities this group had to overcome. The story we were writing, if we had pulled off the ‘W’ tonight, that alone would have been something pretty special to hang our hats on.

“But no matter how many guys had the mumps or injuries, you don’t want to end the season with a game like that.”