BOISE, Idaho — Last February, a group of filmmakers created “The House That Rob Built”, a documentary about the rich history and tradition of the Montana women’s basketball program under Robin Selvig’s 38 seasons of guidance.
Since Selvig retired following the 2015-2016 season, a Lady Griz program that was once the crown jewel of the Big Sky Conference has been slipping. And Monday’s catastrophic loss in the first round of the Big Sky Conference women’s basketball tournament deepened what rock bottom might be for one of the most storied programs in college basketball history.
Entering this week’s Big Sky women’s basketball tournament in Idaho’s capital city, Montana had just one postseason win since Selvig stepped away. Although the Lady Griz entered the tournament on a three-game losing streak, it seemed like UM could get its bearings under the Idaho Century Arena lights against a Sac State that won just two games this season.
The Hornets entered the game with a 2-18 record, an RPI of 339 and the last-place seed in the tournament field.
Montana raced to a 7-0 lead in less than 90 seconds and led 9-2 early in a contest that seemed like it would turn into an easy runaway for the favored seed.
But the final 35 minutes, particularly the fourth quarter, turned into a calamity of errors that lead to arguably the worst loss in the history of the University of Montana women’s basketball program.
Sacramento State put together a 14-3 run in the fourth quarter to emerge with a 65-58 win. A team that has not won since January 20th; a team that entered the tournament with an Ratings Percentage Index among the worst 15 teams out of 358 Division I squads in the country; a team that has won a combined 25 league games over the last five years… a team that took down what once was the mightiest program in the history of the Big Sky Conference on Monday night.
“It’s a big win,” Sac State head coach Bunky Harkleroad said. “There’s a lot of really good programs in this league. Montana is obviously one of the most storied programs in the nation. A win in the Big Sky Tournament, as tough as this league is, we are thrilled and we are grateful.”
In the first year under interim head coach Mike Petrino, the Lady Griz mounted their first four and five-game winning streaks since the Selvig era in late February.
But a 30-point home loss thanks to losing the fourth quarter by 20 points to eventual league champion Idaho State sparked a three-game losing streak to enter the tournament as the No. 6 seed. UM suffered a 92-72 loss at Idaho in its regular-season finale last Friday.
The narrative entering Monday’s nightcap was that the Lady Griz could get acclimated to the atmosphere of the tournament with a warm-up win against the worst team in the league.
If that scenario played out, the Lady Griz would get a third crack this season at arch-rival Montana State in Tuesday’s final quarterfinal contest.
Instead, Montana finished 4-of-31 from beyond the 3-point arc, shot 29.9 percent overall and played what could only be deemed as a nightmarish fourth quarter to allow the Hornets to become the first No. 11 seed in the history of the Big Sky Tournament to earn a first-round win.
“You plan, you prepare and in a year of pivoting, you don’t prepare for this moment,” Petrino said. “I will start with that I love this group of girls. I love how hard they worked. And I love the effort they gave. We unfortunately had a rough shooting night but their effort was there.
“This has been a very challenging year and I’m really proud of how hard they competed and worked and how hard they tried to come together.”
Petrino referenced the fact that his team had eight newcomers and seven returners, two-thirds of UM’s minutes were gone, and 70 percent of UM’s scoring was gone from last season’s fourth-place finisher.
“It hurts now but we will get over the pain and look at the growth we had,” Petrino said. “I’m very proud of this team.”
The higher seeded Lady Griz entered the game with a roster highlighted by the most talented front-court duo in the league. Sophomore Carmen Gfeller led the league in field goal percentage and free throw shooting on the way to earning third-team All-Big Sky honors. Abby Anderson, a 6-foot-2 junior from Hillsboro, Oregon, had a career-year, averaging 12.6 points and 6.8 rebounds while leading the Big Sky in blocks on the way to also earning third-team All-Big Sky.
Against Sac State’s high-pressure style, usually the best way to down the Hornets is to have athletic posts who can run the floor. Monday, Montana struggled to get out in transition. And while Anderson (14 points on 7-of-11 shooting) and Gfeller (11 points on 3-of-8) were decently efficient offensively, the rest of UM’s anemic offensive attack doomed Montana.
“It sucks but it fuels you,” Anderson said. “We all said in the locker room, we are tired of this. We are tired of this feeling in the Boise locker room or the Reno locker room that we’ve had the last couple of years.
“At this point, it’s so important that we are all in the gym this summer, that we all believe in this program. I want to get Montana Lady Griz back to the dynasty it was and I wholeheartedly believe that with Sophia, Carmen, we have the group to do it.”
UM junior Sophia Stiles led UM with 17 points, while also snaring seven rebounds and dishing out four of UM’s nine assists. But the former two-time Montana Gatorade Player of the Year from Malta also missed four of her five tries from beyond the arc and half of her 12 free throw attempts.
That 1-of-5 effort from deep was part of an evening that saw the Lady Griz miss 26 of its first 28 tries from the 3-point line. UM shot 2-of-14 from beyond the arc in the first half.
“It sucks. Everyone was expecting to win coming into this game,” Stiles said. “We didn’t overlook them. We knew we had to play well. But it’s frustrating, it’s sad and…I don’t know, hopefully, we can rally together and use this as motivation for next year but right now, it hurts.”
In the second half, UM’s only makes from deep came in the last minute, 47 seconds. Madi Schoening, Montana’s lone senior who finished 2-of-6 from deep and 2-of-11 overall, hit a triple with 107 seconds left to cut the Sac lead to 57-52. Stiles hit her first and only 3-pointer with 19 seconds left to shave the gap to 62-58.
“There’s some possessions you want back but there were also many shots tonight that were good shots,” Petrino said. “There was never a possession, other than a turnover, that wasn’t productive.
“We started out really well…they went to their zone to break our rhythm up, then they went back and forth, then they collapsed on us inside. We spent a lot of time shooting in practice. Unfortunately, they just didn’t go down.”
Following Stiles’ second-chance corner triple — Anderson gathered an offensive rebound after a Stiles missed free throw before assisting her classmate— to keep the difference at four points, Sac State’s Tiana Johnson (a Kalispell, Montana native) missed a free throw and Schoening secured her sixth rebound of the game.
Seconds later, Schoening threw the ball to Sac State’s Sarah Abney, accounting for UM’s 15th turnover in the game and putting an exclamation point on what could only be deemed as a fourth quarter meltdown.
“They made more shots than we did, they made plays,” Petrino said. “We got our shots. We shot below our average for the season from the field, we shot below our average from 3. We even shot below our average from the free throw line.”
Sac State wing Summer Menke, a 5-foot-10 sophomore dynamo, led the upset charge by playing her energetic and relentless style. She led all scorers with 18 points and she also led the game with 14 rebounds, out-rebounding UM’s all-league post duo by two all by herself in 39 minutes of action.
Menke was one of five Hornets that scored in double figures. Sophomore guard Jordan Olivares scored 15 points and grabbed six rebounds. Johnson added 11 points and six boards.
Schoening scored eight points in the final game of her Lady Griz career. Kylie Frolich scored eight points and grabbed 10 rebounds to account for literally all of UM’s bench production on a night where only five Lady Griz (Stiles, Anderson and Gfeller were the others) scored any points at all.
The Lady Griz end the season on a four-game losing streak that puts their final record at 12-12. In Selvig’s 38 seasons, the Lady Griz finished at .500 once (his first) and with one losing season (1998-99). Since then, between four seasons under Shannon Schweyen and one campaign with Petrino, UM is 52-69 overall and 34-42 in league play.
“Being at Montana, it’s a dynasty,” Stiles said. “We are surrounded by all the history all the time. We want to get back there.”
The Hornets move on to play the Bobcats. During his first two seasons at the helm between 2013 and 2015, Harkleroad went 36-28, winning several Big Sky tournament games. Over the last five seasons, Sac State went 49-101, losing in the first round of the tournament each season.
Now Sac gets a chance to play the defending Big Sky champion Bobcats. A year after winning a league-record 19 conference contests and a school-record 25 games overall, Montana State is a new-look team that features five freshman and three sophomores in its core rotation yet still posted a 13-3 record in league play.
MSU beat Sac State 61-57 and 81-66, respectively, in Sacramento less than a week before this tournament started.
Yet the Hornets, a team that lost 18 of its 20 league games, are now the hottest team in this tournament entering Tuesday’s 8 p.m. quarterfinal.
“Facing them, I think we have a pretty good idea of what we are going to do,” Harkleroad said. “It’s just a matter of are we going to be able to stop them.”
Photos by Brooks Nuanez – All Rights Reserved.
