Travis DeCuire finally earned a win in Pac 12 Country. And Wednesday’s “After Dark” victory at the University of Washington for the Grizzlies held extra meaning for Montana’s seventh-year head coach in his fourth game playing the Huskies in the Emerald City, his hometown.
Before Wednesday’s late-night tip in Seattle, success had eluded the Griz against the Pac 12 for a decade and a day. The last time Montana defeated a team from the West Coast’s “premier” conference came when UM defeated Oregon State 71-66 on December 15 of 2010.
DeCuire, a UM alum who was an All-Big Sky point guard for the Griz in the early 1990s, went to high school at Mercer Island Prep. Much of his recruiting pipeline over the last seven seasons has come from Western Washington, specifically the Seattle-Tacoma metro area.
On Wednesday, the Griz built a 12-point halftime lead despite not shooting particularly well, then hung on to earn the second Power 5 victory of DeCuire’s tenure by beating the Huskies 66-58 in Seattle late on Wednesday night.
“It’s hard to explain; I go into the locker room and I don’t really have a post-game speech,” DeCuire told Riley Corcoran, the Voice of the Griz, on the Grizzly Radio Network. “So many guys did what they needed to do to get this win.
“Sometimes, a game when you think you might have a chance to pull away. And then it gets ugly. That was the grit that has been missing and we were wondering if we had it. Now we know it’s there. Now we have to sustain it.”
DeCuire is the latest in an almost unending stretch of UM head coaches stemming from Jud Heathcote’s tree. DeCuire’s mentors, particularly Mike Montgomery, rose to great heights at Montana and after. Montgomery hired DeCuire as an assistant job on Monte’s staff while at Cal.
During his time coaching his alma mater, DeCuire has had close calls against Pac 12 schools. In his first season leading the Griz, Montana lost 78-76 at Cal. And in 2017, UM lost 66-63 at Washington. Last season, the Grizzlies fell 73-56 to UW.
This season’s Montana team features nine players new to the roster if you count graduate transfer Cam Satterwhite, who left the Grizzlies abruptly earlier this week. Either way, this team has less familiar faces than any times during DeCuire’s tenure, a run that includes four 20-win seasons, consecutive NCAA appearances the last two times the Big Dance has taken place and a total of 129 victories, 85 that have come against the Big Sky.
These Griz sputtered to an 0-4 start, the worst start by the program since DeCuire’s third season. Montana could not handle USC’s size in a season-opening 76-62 loss in Los Angeles to open this season. The Grizzlies were then thrust into Big Sky Conference play against Southern Utah, suffering a pair of one-point losses in Cedar City, just the second 0-2 start to league play in 25 years at UM.
Then came last week’s 63-50 loss at Georgia, a contest that, despite being played against an SEC opponent, was a contest where the Griz looked disjointed and out of flow.
Saturday, Montana pounded Yellowstone Christian College by 60 points in its first home game of this truncated non-conference schedule, perhaps setting the stage for DeCuire’s second Power 5 victory in 24 games against the top teams in college basketball during his tenure.
“I’ve had a couple of rough nights the last couple of nights (against Pac 12 opponents), particularly Stanford last year, here two years ago…that was our game and we were relying on some calls to go our way instead of making plays and I don’t know if we had the confidence we needed down the stretch.
“Those games, I didn’t sleep much after them because I think I could’ve been better. We all could’ve been better but I know for a fact when I looked in the mirror that I could’ve been better in both of those games and we should have won both of those games.
“Give me one more shot. Give me one more shot down the stretch and we can be solid.”
The Grizzlies’ lead swelled to 15 points with three minutes to go in the first half as the visitors penetrated the Huskies’ zone relatively easily and also took advantage of a clunky UW team that already dropped a game to UC Riverside earlier this season.
Washington scored the last five points of the first stanza but the Griz still led by double digits at the break despite shooting just 34.5 percent in the first 20, including a 2-of-13 shooting performance from leading scorer sophomore Kyle Owens.
UM led by double digits for the first eight minutes of the second half before the hosts mounted their run. UW went on a 12-2 run to cut the Griz lead to 46-45 with 8:37 left but Owens, who led five Montana scorers in double figures with 13 points despite a tough shooting night, halted that spurt with a bucket right before the second-to-last media timeout.
With 6:25 left, Washington tied the game at 50 on a Riley Sorn dunk, evening the margin for the first time in nearly 29 minutes. Two minutes later, the hosts earned their first lead since less than five minutes into the game.
“There was a lot of stay positive, stay positive, stay aggressive, stay aggressive, we are in good shape, just keep guarding and that was one of the things we’d been addressing the last seven, eight days,” DeCuire said. “I had a conversation with the seven, eight guys in our rotation and let them express where we were and I told them what we saw and what we needed.
“Then they gave it.”
A Josh Vazquez 3-pointer with 3:32 left plus a pair of Vazquez free throws and a triple by true freshman Brandon Whitney with 2:16 to go put the Huskies away, giving UM a 59-53 lead with less than 200 seconds remaining.
Vazquez, a sophomore, and Whitney, a rookie, combined to score 12 of the last 15 points of the final four minutes to earn the Grizzlies their second win of this season.
“Against Southern Utah, we miss our shots that we need to extend our lead to force them to foul,” DeCuire said. “Tonight, Vazquez and Whitney made those shots.”
Despite Owens going 4-for-18 from the floor, he led five Griz in double figure scoring. Vazquez finished with 12 points, as did true freshman forward Josh Bannan. Senior center Michael Steadman had 11 points while Whitney scored 10 points.
Montana hosts Dickinson State Friday night before playing Arizona next Tuesday. Wednesday’s win will resonate for some time for DeCuire.
“I have so many friends here and the lead up, the 24 hours before, the text messages, the support is huge,” DeCuire said. “When you’ve got guys who you’ve known since when you are single digits in age texting you ‘go get it’, it’s huge to go get it when you come home.”
Photos by Nic Hallisey, Montana Sports Information. All Rights Reserved.
