BOISE, Idaho — Travis DeCuire knew the moment he returned to lead his alma mater, he would have to do it his way.
The University of Montana has one of the most storied and successful coaching trees in all of Division I men’s college basketball. It’s a lofty weight to shoulder as each branch grows.
From Judd Heathcote to Jim Brandenburgh, Mike Montgomery to Stew Morrill, Blaine Taylor to Don Holst, Larry Krystkowiak to Wayne Tinkle, most every head coach for the Griz has launched successful careers in Missoula, reaching the highest ranks of the game after departing the Garden City.
Heathcote won a national championship at Michigan State with Magic Johnson as his point guard after helping recruit Micheal Ray Richardson, the No. 4 overall pick in the NBA Draft, to the Griz. Brandenburgh went on to a Hall of Fame career at Wyoming. Montgomery led Stanford to the Final Four before serving as the head coach of the Golden State Warriors.
Stew Morrill became one of the great mid-major coaches in the country, helping Utah State perennially dominate the WAC. Taylor will likely be in the Hall of Fame at Montana and Old Dominion. Holst, despite his unceremonious firing 20 years ago, led UM to the NCAA Tournament his final year guiding the Grizzlies.
Krystkowiak, arguably the greatest Griz player this side of “Sugar Ray” Richardson, played in the NBA for 13 years and was the most recent head coach to help the Griz win an NCAA Tournament game when Montana took down Nevada in 2006. UM’s version of Coach K went on to coach in the NBA before spending a decade as the head coach at the University of Utah.
And Tinkle, a 1,500-point scorer during his playing career at UM, led the Grizzlies to three Big Dances in four years before taking over at Oregon State. Last March, Tinkle led the Beavers on one of the great Cinderella runs in the history of the NCAA Tournament, guiding a 12-seed to the Elite Eight.
Since Heathcote roamed the sidelines at Dahlberg Arena in the mid-1970s, almost every man who has done so, including former Lady Griz head coach Robin Selvig, had fierce ties to the University of Montana. Over the last four decades, many have worked for and with one another, helping weave one of the richest and most influential coaching trees in college basketball.
“It’s a cradle of basketball on the West Coast,” Montgomery said in an interview in 2020. “Everyone that has come through Montana has gone on to do very, very well. I don’t know exactly what it is but the fundamentals, the foundation that was laid and how the game should be played, how kids should be treated, how important it was to all of us that were there, it was all-consuming.
“And that continues with Travis DeCuire today.”
Chris Cobb grew up in the Bay Area and played prep at Bishop O’Dowd, one of the premier high school hoops programs on the West Coast. Montana’s current associate head coach first met DeCuire when Cobb was an assistant at his alma mater Chico State, as DeCuire spent six seasons as an assistant on Montgomery’s staff at Cal.
Cobb and DeCuire clicked early, recruiting in the same circles and finding the best ways to pluck talent out of the unbelievable bed of elite basketball players in the area.
And Cobb remembers, even 10 years ago, how much DeCuire would talk about his alma mater and the connections he gained from his time playing at Montana under Morrill and Taylor, then coaching for Taylor at Old Dominion and Montgomery at Cal.
But when DeCuire took the head job at Montana before the 2014-2015 season, the lore of the Griz really started to sink in.
Take a look around Dahlberg Arena and you see championship banners hanging by the dozens. Many belong to Selvig, the legendary Lady Griz architect who played for Heathcote before winning 865 games and advancing to 24 NCAA Tournaments in his 38 seasons at the helm for UM women’s hoops.
Sometimes, the shadows cast by those that came before can be intimidating.
“This is one of the cooler jobs in the country, in the sense that you can’t take this job, you can’t do well at this job, if you don’t know or have not experienced what this place is,” Cobb said.
“I learned right away, I just don’t know if you can do well, I don’t know if you can have the level of pride and understanding that needs to go into it, if you don’t know about the pride and tradition of leading the Grizzlies. Travis encompasses that every day.”
Taylor, a Missoulian with Butte roots who prepped at Hellgate High before starring for the Griz as a slick point guard under Brandenburgh and Montgomery, had a role on championship staffs under Montgomery and Morrill before taking over as head coach when Morrill left for Colorado State in 1991. Taylor went on to win 141 games at Montana, leading the Griz to the NCAA Tournament in 1992 and 1997 before joining Montgomery at Stanford.
Taylor also won 239 games in 12 seasons at Old Dominion and went to the Big Dance four more times, with a few of those runs aided by DeCuire’s help as an assistant.
“When Travis took the job at Montana, it seems like the shadow keeps getting longer,” Taylor said. “And Travis has lived up to it.”
As DeCuire navigates his eighth season leading Montana, he continues to etch his own legacy in the Griz hoops history books.
The native of Seattle has won 20 games four times and needs two more wins to reach the mark again this year. He tied and retied the school record of 26 wins in a single season when he guided the Grizzlies to consecutive NCAA Tournaments in 2018 and 2019. He has three regular-season Big Sky titles to his credit and he’s in search of his third Big Sky tournament title, which would tie Tinkle for the most in program history.
This season, DeCuire has passed Montgomery and Tinkle on Montana’s all-time win list. In January, he won his 100th Big Sky game, a record for a Griz head coach. He enters this tournament with 160 career wins, second in school history behind only George “Jiggs” Dahlberg, the man Montana’s basketball arena is named after.
And while he played for Morrill and Taylor, learned under each as coaches and also has experience coaching high school and junior college hoops on the West Coast, DeCuire knew right away he had to put his own stamp on Griz basketball when he initially took the reins.
“When I took this job, I wanted to do some things different and try to put a fingerprint on it that separates me from everyone else, as opposed to chasing the ghosts,” DeCuire said as he sat in the head coach’s office at the Adams Center, a room that’s adorned with trophies and nets and pictures and jerseys of the legends of the past.
“I knew if I came here and said I’m going to come here and win more banners and go to the NCAA Tournament more, win more games and do these things, well, I’m just chasing ghosts. I’m trying to do something that everyone else before me has not done. And I think that something everyone has done that’s special before me, they had a different personality and they did something different.
“I had to find a way to set a standard that’s my own standard that people accept without me being compared to those before me or I’d never be successful.”
DeCuire has retained Montana’s fierce home court advantage; the Griz went 14-3 in Missoula this season. He has graduated players at a top-notch rate, helping those who didn’t transfer out of his program earn a degree almost across the board. He has also made sure his players are active participants in the classroom and active members of the community.
“I think the one thing that I would say that I’ve learned from him most, from being with him day-in and day-out, is seeing his preparation,” Cobb said. “That preparation leads to him being able to demand the most out of people.”
DeCuire also has the respect of his peers. After initially giving feedback about his rival counterpart, Montana State head coach Danny Sprinkle called back to say he’d love to talk about DeCuire’s passion and pedigree even more. That’s another part of DeCuire’s resume at UM – he’s 14-2 all-time against the Bobcats. Most recently, the Griz defeated the first-place Bobcats 80-74 to extend a home winning streak over MSU that dates back to 2010, denying the Bobcats the conference title for at least one more game in the process.
“The first word that comes to mind is tough and the second is disciplined,” Sprinkle said. “They always seem to be in the right place at the right time and that’s why he’s had the success he’s had. He really does a good job of getting guys to buy in to their role. He gets guys to play tough that may not be that tough. They take on his personality.”
Steve Smiley, the head coach of Northern Colorado, and Todd Simon, the head coach at Southern Utah — both are seeded ahead of Montana in this year’s Big Sky Tournament field — echoed similar sentiments to Sprinkle, who was named the Big Sky Coach of the Year earlier this week.
“What you have to expect is you have to expect a battle,” said Smiley, whose team won for the fourth time in their last five trips to Missoula last week. “If you come into one of these games soft or on your heels, you are going to have real problems. Every single year, his guys are tough, they are going to play really hard and they are going to be physical.”
“When you play Montana, you know they aren’t going to roll over for anybody,” Simon added. “You know it’s going to be a knock-down, drag-out affair. And that’s the way we want it. Coach DeCuire is a fierce competitor. These battles are always fun college basketball games. I certainly respect the ball coach he is.”
Of the UM coaching tree, Montgomery stayed eight years at Montana before moving to Palo Alto. Taylor coached seven years in his hometown before moving to Stanford with Montgomery. Tinkle spent eight seasons at his alma mater before moving to Corvallis.
DeCuire is now in his eighth year. He’s noted that one of the factors that he hopes will distinguish himself from his predecessors is longevity — even if most believe it’s a matter of when, not if DeCuire moves on to another opportunity.
When asked what drives him, DeCuire references his fear of complacency. And he also acknowledges that the pride and tradition of Griz hoops is what keeps complacency away.
Nothing lasts forever, particularly in college athletics. But the fact is that DeCuire is the next in the line of a prestigious coaching tree while also leaving his mark on his alma mater. His love for the University of Montana is the tie that binds.
“Travis epitomizes that pride in this place,” Cobb said. “He played here. He’s coached here. He’s coached under the guys that hung a lot of banners up here. It’s a big deal to him, it means something to him.
“And I think when he’s not coaching here, when he retires and he’s sitting in Seattle on his porch, he’s going to always pay attention to this, this place, Dahlberg, Missoula. Griz hoops and this place, it’s what means the most to him.”
Photos by Brooks Nuanez. All Rights Reserved.
