In a game billed as a battle between two of the Big Sky Conference’s best backcourts, Montana’s latest pair of stud guards embraced the challenge with open arms.
UM’s Walter Wright and Michael Oguine out-dueled Montana State’s Marcus Colbert and Tyler Hall in front of 5,407 as Montana notched its 11th straight win in the Treasure State’s fiercest rivalry. Wright scored 24 points and grabbed 10 rebounds, Oguine scored 21 points and played disruptive defense against the sharpshooting Hall and Montana gutted out a gritty 80-72 win at Montana State on Saturday night.
UM guard Walter Wright
“We took this game as a challenge,” said Wright, a junior transfer from Snow (Utah) College. “Colbert and Tyler Hall, they are two very good players, Hall in particular. He’s not just a good freshman. He’s one of the best players in this league and he is going to be a star in this league for years to come.
“I don’t know how many points we had compared to them but we tried to dig down and put some length on Colbert and Michael did a pretty good job on Hall. There’s really no stopping those guys so we just tried to contain them.”
With Montana clinging to a one-point lead with three minutes, 10 seconds to play, Oguine converted an acrobatic reverse layup. With Montana leading 72-69 with 1:08 left, Oguine drilled a dagger 3-pointer from the corner thanks to an extra pass from Jack Lopez to bury the Bobcats.
“I heard about Tyler Hall and I did take that as a challenge,” said Oguine, a true freshman from Chaminade Prep in Chatsworth, California. “My coaches, they definitely challenged me and my teammates too to guard him and to play my game at the same time. At the end of the day, we wanted to win but yes, I did take it as a challenge.”
Colbert scored 21 points and notched four assists while Hall scored 17 points during a game that saw 10 ties and 10 lead changes. But Hall missed his first six 3-pointers and seven of eight overall while Colbert missed his final four 3-pointers after making his first two. The duo combined to shoot 14-of-36 from the floor. Hall entered the game averaging 20.5 points per game in Big Sky play while Colbert entered the contest averaging 17 points and 5.4 assists, the latter the second-best total in the league.
MSU guard Marcus Colbert gets the corner on UM guard Walter Wright
“They were the more physical team,” Colbert said. “The difference in the rebounds hurt. I think they made 25 free throws. Those two things come down to toughness. They just out-toughed us tonight.”
All week, Montana State head coach Brian Fish harped on his team to summon physicality in the post in an effort to harness Montana All-Big Sky forward Martin Breunig. Fish brought back former Bobcat center Jourdain Allou to practice as Breunig all week.
“Because they were switching and denying so much, it allowed for penetration,” Montana head coach Travis DeCuire said after his team moved to 8-1 in Big Sky play, 13-7 overall. “The other thing we figured they would do that they did last year was they wouldn’t leave Martin. Ball screens away from them, there was no rotations on the roller. When we put them in ball screens, they didn’t hedge which allowed Walter and Mike to penetrate one on one. We took advantage of that.”
The Bobcats got the 6-foot-9 Montana star into foul trouble early and he missed significant stretches in each half. But the Bobcats were never able to extend their second-half lead to more than eight points with Breunig on the bench, while the Griz were able to maintain their interior defense and still dominate the glass.
Montana won the battle of the boards 41-28, including grabbing 15 offensive rebounds and earning a 16-3 advantage in second-chance points. Wright penetrated the paint relentlessly, earning 13 free throws and converting 12 as Montana made 25-of-33 from the charity stripe overall. Oguine converted two 3-point plays and hit 6-of-7 free throws overall.
MSU swingman Quinton Everett dunks on the first possession of the game
“There are three things that jump out when you are talking about toughness: one, is rebounding. One is going to the line, not avoiding contact but going through it. And the third thing is second-chance points,” Fish said after his team fell to 4-5 in Big Sky play, 9-12 overall. “They dominated all three of those. It was fools gold for the longest time because we were leading and we had opportunities to change it late in the game but when it became a one-possession game, those things reared their ugly heads. We haven’t gotten whipped like that on the boards, toughness-wise…this is something I haven’t worried about this group. Tonight was just one of those nights.”
Despite the back and forth nature of the scoring, the game struggled to establish any sort of flow because of the tight nature of the officiating. Each team was called for 25 fouls as each of Montana’s five starters picked up four fouls.
“We knew there would be a lot of whistles, a lot of fouls because of the rivalry,” Wright said. “The refs called it pretty tight but at the same time, they let us play.”
Quinton Everett drove the baseline and threw down a two-handed dunk on MSU’s first possession of the game, bring the sizeable crowd to its feet and ensuring Wright drew the ire of DeCuire for the missed defensive assignment. DeCuire pulled his junior point guard right after the missed defensive match up, something that seemed to spark Wright.
“My coach pulled me early for making a mental mistake in the first two minutes,” Wright said. “He got on me and let me know I had to stay aggressive. I just tried to attack what they were giving me.
“Coach told me a lot of words I can’t say right here.”
UM guard Walter Wright rises up over MSU guard Marcus Colbert
Eight minutes into the game, MSU sophomore Zach Green threw down a thunderous one-handed dunk in traffic to break a 16-16 tie. Montana State led for the rest of the first half, taking a 37-34 lead to the break.
Colbert drilled a jump shot with a defender in his face to give MSU a 51-43 lead with 12:18 to play. Montana promptly mounted a 9-0 run that included five points from Oguine, including an old-fashioned 3-point play. Montana retook the lead on a pair of Wright free throws with 9:15 left.
The game went back and fourth for the next six minutes as Wright scored all 12 of his second-half points down the stretch. MSU junior Sarp Gobeloglu hit a 3-pointer with 5:17 to play to give MSU a 64-63 lead but Bobby Moorehead answered with his second 3-pointer of the night as Montana took the lead for good.
“Grit. We showed heart down the stretch,” DeCuire said. “We had a hard time defending them early and they hit almost every open shot in the first half, tough contested shots. I think Hall probably shot better contested than open. He just shot over the top of us. At the eight-minute mark, we finally figured out how to defend some guys and took some things away. Our defense won that game for us.”
Wright’s layup with 2:29 left gave UM a 70-67 lead. Everett missed a 3-pointer on the ensuing possession and Breunig secured his fourth rebound. DeCuire took a time out and it seemed there was no doubt where the Griz would turn to with 1:08 left to play.
Sure enough, Montana threw the ball into their star and Breunig delivered, ripping a sweet spin move into the lane and finishing at the rim to give the Griz a 72-67 lead. Despite the foul trouble, Breunig finished with 14 points, six below his game average in league play.
UM forward Martin Breuing posts up MSU forward Danny Robison
“No question that’s where we were going,” DeCuire said. “He’s the reason we are here. I think that some of our success for other guys when we shoot the ball well is because we play through the post and teams are keying two and three guys on him and they are leaving us open for penetration. He’s a key guy. I knew if he could get both feet in the paint, he would hit that shot.”
Hall hit his lone 3-pointer with 30 seconds left to cut the UM lead to 77-72 but MSU ran out of time. The MSU loss snaps a two-game winning streak as the Bobcats hit road for games at Portland State and Sacramento State next week.
Montana, the defending Big Sky regular season champions, have won nine of its last 10. The Grizzlies are searching for a 10th bid to the NCAA Tournament and have now defeated MSU 11 straight times dating back to 2010.
“It’s one game at a time,” DeCuire said. “There are some games that they have walked away from thinking they should’ve won. They could’ve beat us here last year. Slow start again last year. They had all the momentum, they are making shots. Then we got some stops down the stretch and some big plays just like tonight. I think they walk away from this one thinking they should’ve won. They played well enough to win but we just made some plays down the stretch and the ball bounced our way a few times. Each game is an individual experience and we will have to play better than we played tonight if we want to beat them at home.”
Photos by Brooks Nuanez. All Rights Reserved.
