Idaho State finishes Beehive swing in Logan


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POCATELLO, Idaho — Only one team in all of college football has played every four-year football program from the state of Utah in the past two seasons.

It would be nice if that team resided within the Beehive State, but Pocatello, Idaho, is close enough.

Idaho State (0-1) wraps up its Beehive State swing Saturday evening with a game in Romney Stadium against Utah State (0-1), but don’t expect the Bengals to back down from their sixth Utah opponent in 12 months.

“I think the biggest thing is just that it’s close,” Idaho State quarterback Justin Arias said. “You don’t have to take a plane ride or a two-day trip. You just get there, play and then head back. It’s a real short trip. I’ve enjoyed them a lot.”

For Bengals coach Mike Kramer, the Utah schools represent a place he wants his program to be.


It's a great opportunity for us to play some real good football teams, and also play some teams where financially it doesn't cost us so much to get there. We want to become so much better to where we can be a real regional rival with every one of those teams.

–Idaho State coach Mike Kramer


“It’s a great opportunity for us to play some real good football teams, and also play some teams where financially it doesn’t cost us so much to get there,” he said. “We want to become so much better to where we can be a real regional rival with every one of those teams.”

The Bengals just wrapped up a road tilt at Utah, a recent addition to the Pac-12, and Kramer isn’t taking lightly the trip to play Utah State coach Matt Wells’ squad. In fact, he said when the two teams roll out their defenses, it will be like looking in a mirror.

“They’ve established themselves as multi-faceted defense,” Kramer said. “We run the exact same defense, and we know some of the nuances and things they like to do. We have a lot of familiarity with the multiplicity Utah State brings.”

Idaho State started the 2013 season with a home game against Division II Dixie State, a 40-14 win for the orange team. Since then, it has faced Big Sky Conference rivals Weber State (a 32-7 loss) and Southern Utah (a 19-9 loss), late-November matchup BYU (a 59-13 loss) and most recently the Pac-12’s Utah (a 56-14 loss).

Kramer has spent so much time in the state of Utah over the past two seasons, he joked on Wednesday’s Big Sky coaches’ teleconference that the LDS Church was naming a room after him in the refurbished Ogden Temple. The extra road trips to Idaho State’s neighbor state have also helped the team.

“We’re growing as a program. It didn’t show on the scoreboard, but it showed in a lot of other ways Thursday night,” Kramer said after the Utah loss.

For the Bengals’ matchup against the Aggies, Kramer knows preparation starts with the return of star quarterback Chuckie Keeton. But after watching Utah State’s opener at Tennessee, he isn’t convinced the senior signal caller is entirely healthy after tearing his anterior cruciate ligament last season.

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“He’s a great player. If he has all of his facilities and he is able to run and throw, they become so multidimensional and literally unstoppable,” Kramer said of Keeton and the Aggie offense. “In the Tennessee game, he started to fatigue himself and he was dragging his leg around a little bit. I hope for Utah State fans that he can be as healthy as possible.”

The more recent loss of star linebacker Kyler Fackrell will also change how Idaho State views the Aggies in preparation mode.

“The loss of Kyler Fackrell is pretty heavy,” Kramer said. “He’s a former quarterback that came in as a linebacker, and he’s a guy that stood out since the first day we started looking at the Utah State defense. How they replace him will be an interesting part of the game for us Saturday night.”

Kramer regularly rides his bike from Pocatello to the smaller communities in Cache County, Utah, and his starting quarterback is also excited to make the team’s final trip to Utah before opening up its Big Sky campaign.

“I’m looking forward to another game, another opportunity to get better,” Arias, a senior, said. “Offensively, we did well last week. But there are a lot of things we can improve on.”

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