MISSOULA – With her first basket in Montana’s home game against Sacramento State on Thursday – a 3-pointer, 57 seconds after tip-off – the Hornets’ Solape Amusan surpassed her season scoring average.
With her second – another 3-pointer, 46 seconds after the first – she tied her third-highest scoring night of the season.
And with her third – yet another 3-pointer, this one coming just 34 ticks after the second one – she guaranteed herself, at worst, the second-highest scoring game of her Sac State career so far – all in the first 2:17 of the game.
Altogether, Amusan made five 3-pointers in the first half (six in the game) and finished with 19 points – blowing past her previous career-high of 11 with a stunning shooting exhibition that threatened to torpedo Montana’s carefully-crafted defensive game plan against the first-place Hornets.
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With the specter of a third-straight home conference loss hanging over him, Lady Griz coach Brian Holsinger instead chose to stick to his guns and follow the original scouting report.
“After making, whatever, six the whole year, (Amusan) makes the same number tonight,” Holsinger said. “Sometimes things work, sometimes they don’t. … Some of the Dahlberg magic is going some other place. But I play the percentages until it changes and we have to adjust.”
It was a microcosm of his team’s tenacity as the Lady Griz fought back from a 14-point second half deficit, with Gina Marxen’s late and-1 giving the Lady Griz an 81-77 win that doubles as the signature victory of Holsinger’s Lady Griz career thus far.
“For our kids to respond from adversity like that, after getting smacked around a little bit, and we hadn’t played well, is the biggest part of it,” said Holsinger, who’s squad dropped consecutive home games to Eastern Washington (87-60) and Montana State (72-63). “They started to believe and the crowd started to feel it, Dahlberg started getting electric, and that’s what it should be here. And so it was cool.”
The scouting report on Sacramento State is simple. With Kahlaijah Dean, the sprightly, shifty guard transfer from Oakland University who’s averaging over 21 points per game, and Isnelle Natabou, the Mikan-esque, 6’5” Czech statue who’s the only player in the league averaging a double-double, the Hornets have two of the best players in the league. They’re both defense-warping scoring forces, requiring tweaks and tricks and wholesale changes to stop them from taking over the game.
On Thursday, Montana trapped Dean on the perimeter and even in the back-court, pressing to force the ball out of her hands. They sagged into the lane on her drives and doubled and even tripled Natabou on post catches, leaving role players like Amusan and Kaylin Randhawa open for catch-and-shoot 3-pointers.
And while Amusan, Randhawa, Madison Butcher and Benthe Versteeg combined to make 10 of 19 3-pointers, Dean took 23 shots to get her 24 points, Natabou attempted just four shots and scored seven points, and the Hornets, who played only seven players (and only six for more than two minutes) got fatigued and fell apart late against Montana’s full-court press.
“I think (Sac State) definitely got tired,” Holsinger said. “Some of that pressing, not having a deep bench, it’s hard. There were some tired legs out there in that fourth quarter. And we weren’t gonna guard some of their kids off their bench, and so they were very thin tonight. So that worked to our advantage, too.”
Dean, who averaged nearly 30 points per game last weekend en route to her fourth Big Sky Player of the Week Award this season, had just seven points at halftime but scored the Hornets’ first seven points in the third quarter. A flurry of four more points from Dean pushed Sac State’s lead as high as 14 with less than three minutes left in the third.
Montana countered with a 5-0 run to get back within single digits going to the fourth, capped by a back-cutting layup from freshman point guard Mack Konig.
One game after scoring a career-high 20 points against Montana State, Konig set a new mark with 21 against the Hornets, adding six assists and dissecting Sac State with tough lefty drives and confident pull-up jumpers whenever her defender ducked under screens.
“For freshmen, playing that position, it takes time,” Holsinger said. “It’s a whole new system you’re learning. I’ve challenged her to make the right play. She’s a talent, and as the season goes on, she’s getting more and more comfortable.”
After Dean scored Sac State’s first six points in the fourth quarter, Konig hit a 3 over her counterpart, then held the follow through and talked a little smack as the ball went through the net.
That cut the lead to seven for the first time in the quarter. With under four minutes to go and Sac State still up five, Sammy Fatkin splashed a 3 from the left wing (one possession after badly missing a mid range jumper) then darted in to steal the inbounds pass and funnel it to Dani Bartsch, the long-armed tip of Montana’s press, for an eight-second, 5-0 run and a tie game.
Sac State had enough left in the tank to take the lead twice more, but Bartsch answered Jordan Olivares’ 3-pointer with a bomb of her own, and after Natabou’s layup gave the Hornets a 77-75 lead with a minute left, Marxen drove left through contact for an old-fashioned 3-point play to give the Lady Griz the lead.
After a Hornets turnover and two more free throws by Marxen, Sac State had one last chance, but Randhawa missed the pass to a wide-open Amusan in the corner, instead forcing a 3 that clanged off the back iron with under four seconds to play.
Bartsch (13), Carmen Gfeller (12, despite fouling out in the fourth quarter), Marxen (11) and Libby Stump (10) all joined Konig in double figures for the Lady Griz, who host Portland State on Saturday. The Vikings stayed close to defending conference champion Montana State on Thursday night before falling 64-52 in Bozeman.
“Our team showed grit and perseverance, completely,” Bartsch said. “Even without Carmen, Sammy stepped up huge on the defensive end and gave us great energy. There’s no way we would have come back without her. Everyone on the floor just stepped up big-time.”
