After suffering the second of two tough losses — by two points to McNeese, after a one-point loss to Lamar — Weber State football prepared for a trip to then-No. 8 Montana, a place where opponents rarely win, and faced a daunting possibility of falling to 2-4 on the season.

Junior center Terrance Caldwell said, “We know we have the players, we know we have the talent, we just have to execute.”

Associate head coach Brent Myers said the team was practicing well and “responding correctly.”

The Wildcats got six passing touchdowns from Richie Muñoz, which included three of 50 or more yards, and a kick-return TD from Noah Kjar. Racking up 55 points in an overtime win — the most points ever scored by an opponent in the 38-year history of Washington-Grizzly Stadium — the Wildcats must respond again, for different reasons.

Following the thrill of snapping Montana’s 15-game home winning streak: hosting a Northern Colorado team on a 17-game losing streak.

“We want to take this win and build off it,” senior linebacker Garrett Beck said. “We don’t want this win to be one and done. We want to keep it rolling … that’s what we’ve been talking about all week.”

Beck said that starts with practicing as hard as the week leading up to the Montana win.

Head coach Mickey Mental said now’s the time to challenge his players to do more.

“You don’t get caught up in the result. Focus on your process, and how do we practice better than the week prior,” Mental said.

Offensively, for example, scoring 55 points on the road after scoring 16 and 26 in FCS losses was a breakthrough of playmaking and consistency. But Mental says he isn’t worried about the point total.

“You worry about the process that gets you the results. We had a really good week of practice,” he said. “You can score and (not) be clean during a game, or your preparation isn’t the same, so you’re going to hit a bump in the road. So I just worry about how we practice each week because those are the things that are going to show up on Saturday.”

Beck said on defense, players are focused on “getting back to the basics” of knowing what each player’s job is and staying in their gaps. But the approach doesn’t change, even when an opponent like Montana gets rolling.

“It has to be the same mentality the whole game … start off the game how we finish it,” Beck said.