MISSOULA — Not even halfway through his senior season, Eli Gillman put an exclamation mark of a game on a career whose legend continues to grow by the day.
Already sitting at the top of Montana’s record books Gillman had his best game ever as a Grizzly on Saturday night, rushing for a school-record 275 yards and four touchdowns to become the Big Sky Conference’s outright all-time leader in rushing TDs.
He saved his biggest performance for UM’s biggest game of the season to date, leading the then-No. 4/5 Grizzlies to a dominant 62-22 road win over then-No. 9/10 UC Davis in the FCS game of the week.
Gillman’s day at Davis was one the best in all of college football this season and he earned his flowers on Monday, sweeping the weekly awards as both the Stats Perform FCS national offensive player of the week and the Big Sky offensive player of the week.
Gillman’s 275 yards broke Montana's 25-year-old single-game rushing record of 265 set by Yohance Humphrey against Weber State in 2001. Those 275 yards are also the most in a single game in the Big Sky, the FCS, and all of D-I football so far this season.
His four rushing touchdowns are also tied for the most in D-I football. They brought his career total to 60 rushing touchdowns, moving him past Sacramento State's Charles Roberts to become the league’s all-time rushing touchdown record holder.
With four touchdowns, Gillman has now scored 396 career points, passing former Grizzlies Brody McKnight and Chris Snyder for third place on the Big Sky's all-time scoring list. Only Dan Carpenter's 413 points and Eastern Washington's Cooper Kupp's 464 points remain ahead of him. He is also now second on Montana's all-time points list, only behind Carpenter.
Gillman's four touchdowns also moved him closer to Kupp's Big Sky record of 77 total touchdowns. He now has 66 career total TDs, 11 away from breaking Kupp's Big Sky record.
With a new total of 4,361 career rushing yards, Gillman also extended his school record and moved him into the league’s top eight rushing yards list.
Surprisingly, this is the first time Gillman has been named the FCS offensive player of the week by Stats Perform after earning the freshman of the week award in 2023. It’s also the fourth Big Sky weekly award of his career and his second in the last three weeks.
Gillman and the Grizzlies piled up 607 yards of total offense in the ranked win over the Aggies, one of just 23 600-plus yard days in modern program history.
The Griz return to Missoula this week for Homecoming, set to take on Northern Colorado at 2 p.m. on Saturday afternoon at Washington-Grizzly Stadium. The game caps a week of Homecoming activity at UM, highlighted by the annual Yell Night Pep Rally in the Oval on Friday evening and the Homecoming Parade through downtown Missoula on Saturday morning before the game.
