Darian White, braided and bubbly, still vibrating with energy and talking as fast as her handle, took just a couple sentences to give up the game in the press conference.
“It means a lot, obviously,” White said. “It’s one of our biggest games of the year, and I think it’s more important that we’re heading towards the end of the season, we’re getting ready to clinch a title.”
Coming a few minutes after her Bobcats held off Montana 75-73 for another season sweep in the rivalry, it was a telling quote. Another win over the Lady Griz, and restoring the recent status quo of a Bobcat sweep after a setback in Missoula last year, was nice.
But there are bigger things to play for – including another Big Sky Conference title that, after dropping the Lady Griz off the back of the chasing pack and maintaining their two-game lead over Sacramento State and Northern Arizona with three games to play, the Bobcats have essentially wrapped up.
The win – and the reaction to it – cemented an irresistible narrative, crafted over two games and 80 combined minutes.
The Bobcats are the crafty veterans who have seen every situation. The Lady Griz are flighty and youthful, talented but prone to fatal lapses. And Montana State’s veterans own the elders of Montana.
It’s a stereotype, sure. It also played out at every important juncture of Saturday’s game, including at the very beginning, when MSU jumped out to an early lead by forcing the ball inside, over and over again, to Kola Bad Bear and Lexi Deden. It wasn’t complicated, or pretty – just pragmatic, and Montana couldn’t stop it.
Bad Bear had 10 points in the quarter, all on short jump hooks, of which she converted five in a row. Deden had four, and the Bobcats didn’t make their first field goal outside the paint until the first-quarter buzzer, when White swished a 3 from the left wing for a 21-19 lead.
“They killed us inside, and that’s the game, to be honest,” Montana second-year head coach Brian Holsinger said. “Last year, we were really hard to score on inside. This year, we’re not. We’ve had to double and dig and do things I’ve rarely had to do my whole career. Tonight, we took our chances by not doubling and not digging at the start, and they killed us.”
Montana stayed close through halftime – Montana State led 35-33 at the break – but turned the ball over seven times in a sloppy third quarter that ended on an 11-2 Montana State run.
“It was all about getting stops,” Binford said. “Coach (Sunny) Smallwood, who oversees our defense, tracks whether we get three stops in a row or not. We call those knockouts, and we got zero in the first half. We were not super happy about our defense going into halftime. … Those stops that we were able to get allowed us to get out and run.”
And when Montana finally sped up the Bobcats with a late press and went on a red-hot shooting run in the final three minutes with 3-pointers on four straight possessions – the young team finally playing loose and free to cut an 11-point deficit to two – White and Bad Bear made all four free throws in the final 10 seconds, while Montana’s fabulous freshman Libby Stump missed an open layup that could have cut it to one…the proverbial vets stamping another accentuation to their legacies.
“Yeah, because it’s here, I guess,” an unconvincing-sounding Holsinger said after the game when asked if Montana played better than in the first matchup. “At home I expect us to play a little bit better. We’re working through things.”
That’s the answer of a man whose team is still measuring success in ladder rungs, incremental improvements. The Lady Griz *were* better on Saturday than they were in the first matchup (a 72-63 MSU victory in Missoula), and the young players *are* continuing to take steps forward (I particularly liked a catch-and-go, no hesitation, from Dani Bartsch on the left wing, something she hasn’t shown much before and a potentially devastating wrinkle because she’s so athletic and can shoot a little bit).
But there are levels to this. Montana State doesn’t need little improvements. As White made clear, the Bobcats measure success in wins, and trophies.
“When you get a rivalry game like this, and you know it’s going to have a lot of people in the building and it’s going to be very emotional, it’s nice to know you have seasoned veterans that have been through this experience, and you just put the ball in their hands and let them finish, let them take over,” Binford said.
Montana State celebrates 
Lexi Deden shoots/ by Brooks Nuanez 
Darian White shoots a runner against Libby Stump & Carmen Gfeller/ by Brooks Nuanez 
Carmen Gfeller gets to the rim/ by Brooks Nuanez 
Montana State 18th-year head basketball coach Tricia Binford/ by Brooks Nuanez 
Lexi Deden battles against Dani Bartsch/ by Jason Bacaj 
Montana State senior point guard Darian White shoots a pull up floater/ by Jason Bacaj
