MISSOULA — Through Montana State’s defensive tactics, raw emotion, an officiating crew that completely lost control of the action and the pressure of a rivalry game, nothing could deny the Montana Grizzlies on Saturday night.
Fresh off seeing their 13-game Big Sky Conference winning streak snapped a week ago, the Griz responded in resounding fashion against their fiercest rivals despite a variety of adversity.
Mired in a sloppy slugfest for much of the first 17 minutes of action, true freshman Timmy Falls sparked a 16-2 Montana run to close the first half, Sayeed Pridgett led an explosive second half charge and the hosts played dominant defense throughout on their way to a convincing 90-63 victory in front of 7,256 raucous fans at Dahlberg Arena.
The largest crowd to attend a Grizzly men’s basketball game since 2011 watched the home team shoot 60.5 percent after halftime, hold a 30-point advantage (46-16) in the paint and completely negate preseason Big Sky MVP Tyler Hall to move to the brink of the banner that they so covet.
Montana men’s basketball team celebrates a Bobby Moorehead dunk/by Brooks Nuanez
“We like where we are at,” UM junior Michael Oguine said. “We have already secured a share of the conference championship but we aren’t really into sharing like that. We want to be able to have it to ourselves.”
Falls scored all 14 of his points in the first half as the Griz ended the first stanza on a rip that gave UM a 37-21 lead. Pridgett missed just one of his eight shot attempts in the second half, showing craftiness and finess to buoy Montana in the midst of a tense atmosphere spurred on by the rivalry and a variety of controversial officiating.
In the end, Montana earned its 14th Big Sky victory and its 21st victory overall, setting up a matchup Thursday in Missoula against Weber State with the outright Big Sky crown on the line. Idaho posted a 68-62 win over the Wildcats in Ogden on Saturday night, meaning UM can do no worse than share the league title with WSU. A victory would give Montana the outright title for the first time since 2015.
“We are happy first of all that we can get the title, but they are a tough opponent,” UM point guard Ahmaad Rorie said. “They came in here and beat us on a buzzer-beater last year so we are definitely going to play with a chip on our shoulder because of that.”
The Bobcats held UM’s All-Big Sky junior backcourt without a pointer and to 8-of-25 shooting overall. The visitors managed to junk up the first half with a variety of defensive schemes that had the scoreboard reading 21-18 nearly 17 minutes into the action. Montana State managed to foul out Falls and UM junior center Jamar Akoh, disqualifications that subsequently led to a technical foul on Falls and another on Montana’s bench that initially appeared to be a ejection of Akoh after a ghost foul sent UM’s big man to the bench amidst a reign of boos from the capacity crowd.
But whatever Montana State managed to throw at the league leading Griz, Montana always had an answer. Led by junior Bobby Moorehead’s second straight impressive defensive performance in the rivalry, UM trapped and flustered Hall, harassing him into one of the worst shooting nights of his career. Hall finished 2-of-16 from the floor and did not hit his first 3-pointer until 39 seconds remained and the result was well in hand.
Montana State guard Tyler Hall (3) defended by Montana forward Bobby Moorehead (24)/by Brooks Nuanez
“It’s always a great environment, loud, fun to play in and we just struggled,” Hall said. “You have to credit them. They played good defense. Our shots didn’t fall. They had that advantage all night.”
The Bobcats missed their first 10 3-point tries and finished 6-of-24 from deep on a night the team shot 31.1 percent from the floor. Hall finished with 11 points — he made all six of his free throws — a far cry from the 37 points he scored in MSU’s win over Montana in Bozeman last year, the only victory in the last 15 match-ups between the two teams. Hall scored 21 total points against the Griz this season.
“I can’t fault the guys for the shots we were getting,” MSU fourth-year head coach Brian Fish said. “I liked the looks we got, I liked the efforts we were playing with. Credit them for their defense. We were fighting our tails off. For whatever reason, we couldn’t stick the ball in the hole tonight.”
The win moves Montana to the brink of hanging a banner while the MSU loss means the Bobcats continue to reel. Montana State has lost 10 of its last 12 to fall to 6-10 in league play, 13-16 overall. The Bobcats now sit in 8th place in the Big Sky standings with a home stand against Idaho State and Weber State remaining before the Big Sky Tournament in Reno, Nevada in 10 days.
“It’s very disappointing,” MSU sophomore point guard Harald Frey said after scoring a team-high 14 points. “It’s not how we wanted to come out, of course. This game means a lot to a lot of people. It’s very disappointing.”
Falls, a spirited combo guard from Dublin, California, helped Montana break open what was otherwise a sloppy first half. Montana State missed 18 of its first 21 shot attempts yet stayed close by forcing UM turnovers and playing physical, hard-nosed basketball to make the Griz work for every bucket.
With 3:33 left in the first half, Montana was clinging to a 21-18 lead. Then Falls hit three 3-pointers, two that were a product of the attention MSU paid to Rorie, Akoh and Oguine. Falls had a series where he drilled a 3-pointer, nabbed one of his two steals, converted a lay-up through contact and sunk the free throw for an old-fashioned 3-point play. His 14 points tied his career-high set in December against UC Irvine.
Montana head football coach Bobby Hauck/by Brooks Nuanez
“Timmy has a big heart, no fear and I think he put himself in all the right spots,” DeCuire said. “He was open on some turns but he also attacked the rim. He got the steal for the and-1, slashed to the paint here and there and finished. I thought he was aggressive and when the opportunity presented itself, he took advantage of it.”
Montana took a 37-21 lead to the halftime locker room, then the crowd was ignited by UM’s new leadership while DeCuire prepared his team for the second 20 minutes.
New Griz football coach Bobby Hauck, one of the school’s most successful leaders in his first seven-year stint at his alma mater, gave a short but impassioned speech as chants “Bobby! Bobby!” from a jam-packed student section reigned down. Then Hauck and UM’s new president Seth Bodnar tried to hit half-court shots for scholarships for students, each coming close to nailing the heaves.
“Basketball needs the support of football, football needs to do the same thing in return and when we do that, it creates a camaraderie,” DeCuire said. “As an athletic department, we all need to support each other. We all have high expectations. We are all trying to compete for championships and when the student body supports each other, when the community gets behind all the sports, you have more success.”
After halftime, Montana pushed the lead to 20 in the blink of an eye before foul trouble through a wrench in the rotation. Even with Akoh saddled with foul trouble for most of the game and Rorie and Oguine struggling to find the mark, Montana ripped off 90 points thanks to the 14 second-half points scored by Pridgett, the 13 points and seven rebounds chipped in by true freshman Karl Nicholas and the 10 points scored by Moorehead on 4-of-5 shooting.
“We were going to try to limit those guys,” Fish said. “Michael and Ahmaad didn’t make a 3. We kept them off balance and their depth and ability to score, I thought Sayeed and Karl played really well and gave them a good boost.”
Montana head coach Travis DeCuire and guard Ahmaad Rorie (14)/by Brooks Nuanez
Akoh picked up his fourth foul with 17 minutes left in the game, the first in a sequence of frustrating occurrences that took the attention off the action and moved it on to the officials. Rorie was hammered at the rim to no call, leading to an MSU fast break that ended with Falls under-cutting Bobcat senior Joe Mvuezolo Jr. Shortly after, Moorehead drilled a 3-pointer to extend the lead to 23 points, then had his first in-game dunk of the season to give the Griz a 29-point lead with 10 minutes to play.
With 8:45 left, Falls picked up his fourth foul. He protested the call as he was subbed out, drawing a technical foul, his fifth personal. Moments later, Akoh was called for his fifth foul when Frey broke him down, then slipped on the floor and fell to the ground despite not receiving any contact from Akoh.
When the scorer’s table showed the replay, the officials reprimanded the Montana replay operators, sending the crowd into a frenzy. While the replay played, Moorehead just pointed at the screen at the obviously blown call that cost UM its starting center. Akoh played just 17 minutes.
Eventually, through protests from Akoh and his teammates, the UM bench earned a technical as well. Moments later, MSU junior Sam Neumann was called for an intentional foul. The officials had inexplicably lost control of a game with a 28-point margin.
“They need to learn from that,” DeCuire said of his players’ reactions. “That’s an adverse situation. Things don’t always go your way and you have to find a way to work around it.
“It’s ok to be emotional and get caught up in the game but at the same time, we have to watch our Ps & Qs. You can’t get techs. If that’s a 3-point game, that could’ve cost us the game.”
While the non-basketball relegation took away from the game, Pridgett looked unstoppable. He hit six straight shots to carry UM’s offense. His final bucket with 2:11 left gave Montana its largest lead, 86-56.
Hall hit his first 3-pointer in six tries and just his second field goal in 16 attempts with 39 seconds left, but it was too little too late for a team that once harbored championship expectations and now can’t stop its late-season slide.
Montana forward Sayeed Pridgett (4)/by Brooks Nuanez
“Adversity,” Hall said. “I would say I’m one of the leaders on the team and I didn’t try to help anybody. I didn’t try to get guys together to push through it. I have to do that more. It’s kind of been like that all season. That was the toughest part: staying together. There is going to be adversity in every game. I backed up when adversity hit.”
In the first matchup between the two teams, a 67-52 Griz win in Bozeman pitting two undefeated teams in league play, MSU made just 4-of-24 shots after halftime. Since then, the Griz have won nine of 11 and Saturday’s effort helped Montana bounce back from losses at Eastern Washington and Idaho last weekend. The win also gives Montana 149 wins to Montana State’s 148 in the 297th game between storied rivals, the first time the Griz have ever lead the all-time series.
Now the Griz need one more win to hang their first banner since DeCuire first season, the 10th regular-season Big Sky championship in school history.
“That’s why throughout the season we’ve treated every game the same,” DeCuire said. “Tonight, we prepared for this game the same way we prepared for every game. Routine doesn’t change. You feel like every game you play is for a championship. If you want to win one, you have to win that first game at NAU, you have to win that second game at Southern Utah. We approached those games the same way we approached tonight and we will do the same thing Thursday.”
Photos by Brooks Nuanez. All Rights Reserved.
Stay with the ‘Cats & the Griz at Silver Legacy Resort Casino in Reno, Nevada March 5-12
