Aggie-Illinois State battle on Saturday tops FCS quarterfinal round pairings

Redbirds are coming off a dramatic last-minute upset of defending champion North Dakota State.

And then there were eight.

Indeed, the Football Championship Subdivision playoff committee originally named 24 teams to its national championship playoff, but that number has quickly been whittled down to eight survivors after two rounds of play.

Five of the top eight seeds, including No. 8 UC Davis, have made it into this weekend’s quarterfinals where upstart Illinois State is the only unseeded team remaining.

The Redbirds will be in town Saturday for a repeat playoff showdown with the Aggies in a 2 p.m. contest at UC Davis Health Stadium.

With most students gone at the conclusion of Fall Quarter finals, plenty of good seats are available.

Last season the Aggies hosted the Redbirds in the second round and dominated from start to finish in a 42-10 rout.

However, Illinois State just disrupted this year’s entire bracket by stunning No. 1 seed and defending national champion North Dakota State, 29-28, last Saturday in Fargo.

The Redbirds trailed 28-14 with under three minutes to play, but rallied to keep their championship hopes alive in a game many observers regard as the best win in school history.

The winner of the UCD-Illinois State game moves on to the semifinals to take on the winner of an intriguing matchup between No. 4 Tarleton State and No. 12 Villanova at Tarleton’s home turf in Stephenville, Texas.

The Texans took down unseeded North Dakota, 31-13, while Villanova upset No. 5 Lehigh, 14-7.

There’s more drama on the other side of the draw where the state of Montana is once again well represented.

No. 3 Montana, fresh off a 50-29 win over No. 14 South Dakota State, will take on No. 11 South Dakota, which crushed No. 6 Mercer, 47-0.

Yes, that’s the same Mercer that the Aggies led, 23-17, midway through the fourth quarter of the FCS Kickoff Classic in Montgomery, Alabama back in August when the game was declared a “no contest” because of repeated lightning strikes.

After Saturday’s lopsided loss to South Dakota, Mercer head coach Mike Jacobs announced he was taking the head coaching job at FBS Toledo in his home state of Ohio.

The final quarterfinal game pits No. 2 Montana State against No. 7 Stephen F. Austin in a 6 p.m. Friday kickoff on ESPN.

Montana State moved on with a 21-13 win over Yale, and SF Austin slipped past No. 10 Abilene Christian, 41-34.

If both Montana schools win, they’ll meet again Dec. 20 in Bozeman. Two weeks ago, in the annual Brawl of the Wild in Missoula, Montana State beat Montana, 31-28.

Attendance in the quarterfinal round was a mixed bag given the academic schedules of many of the participants.

UC Davis drew a respectable 8,525 on the final weekend before finals started, but Mercer drew just 3,042.

Montana State led the pack with a sellout crowd of 20,867, followed closely by Tarleton State with 19,742.

Montana drew 18,197, but North Dakota State had a crowd of just 10,464, barely half the capacity of the Fargodome. Apparently Bison fans were bored with all the winning.

Lehigh’s crowd was 8,848 and Stephen F. Austin drew 8,645.

Reach Bob Dunning at bobdunning@thewaryone.com