The Bobcats only stopped scoring when Tricia Binford emptied her bench.
The Montana State women’s basketball team made history on Saturday afternoon in front of the biggest crowd to take in a ladies’ hoops game in 15 years at Brick Breeden Fieldhouse.
The Bobcats followed up a blistering 26-point first quarter with a virtuoso 31-point second quarter to take a 27-point lead into halftime against the rival Lady Griz. In front of a raucous 4,120 adorned in gold garments for the hoops edition of the “Gold Rush”, MSU then put the Lady Griz away in the third quarter with a 17-3 run to push the lead to 40 points.
As many in the Treasure State media scrambled to look up historic markers like “what is the most points ever scored in a rivalry game?” and “have the Lady Griz ever been down by 40 in a Big Sky Conference contest?”, Montana State’s 20th-year head coach went with a freshmen-heavy lineup for most of the last six minutes of the contest.
By the time the final buzzer sounded, Montana State had its 18th straight victory, an MSU program record, thanks to a 98-66 beat down of their archrivals.
“This team is wise beyond its years, especially when you have underclassmen like this and they’ve done a tremendous job of staying in the present,” Binford said. “We had a really productive week this week and it was the first full week we’ve had to focus on ourselves. We focused on habits.
“I don’t talk about the win streaks with them. We have taken the habit from our men’s football team with what they did in the fall and what it looks like for us to go 1-0 and move the needle on us getting better.”
The win helps the Bobcats break the record for consecutive victories set by the 2019-2020 squad, a team that many consider to be Binford’s best and one of the great women’s basketball teams in the history of the university and the Big Sky.
The victory also pushes Montana State to 15-0 in Big Sky Conference play and 25-2 overall, each marking the best starts in school history, the latter serving as the best start in the history of the conference.
“I’m really grateful for this tremendous crowd today and our community has been awesome all season long,” Binford said. “This was an incredible atmosphere from the tip. I love the “Gold Rush”. What a great idea by the marketing department. It was a really special atmosphere today.”
The 98 points is the most ever scored by Montana State against the Lady Griz. The 32-point margin of victory is also the largest in the history of the rivalry. And Montana State is now above .500 against UM under Binford (22-21) for the first time, although the Bobcats have won 15 of the last 18 matchups, including 11 straight in Bozeman.
“We were completely locked in this week,” MSU senior KJ (Limardo) Martin said after finishing her career without a loss in Bozeman against UM. “We knew what we had to work on from the previous week and we executed so well.
“It’s bittersweet, honestly. I came here because of the rivalry and I wanted to play for the state of Montana. This is so exciting but it’s also sad we don’t have another one.”
While everything Montana State wanted to accomplish came through in spades, Montana continues to search for answers. Following now-former head coach Brian Holsinger getting put on administrative leave, UM won five out of seven games, along with losing to MSU 67-66 in Missoula.
After Saturday, Montana has now lost four straight and sit at 6-9 in league play, 10-16 overall.
“I have done a poor job of helping our team understand about how to guard their way through rough shooting stretches,” UM interim head coach Nate Harris said. “We are too dependent on making shots to determine how we feel and it’s me and my job to make them understand if we are going to win games.
“You have to guard your way through the ebbs and the flows. We are always going to be a team that is going to shoot it. You saw it in the second half – if it goes well, you can score quickly. But we failed to guard our way through the rough stretches.”
Montana State did whatever it wanted from the outset, using its high-pressure defense and high-octane offense to run the Lady Griz right out of the Brick. Montana State finished 33-of-63 from the floor with 19 assists while hitting 10-of-23 from beyond the arc.
Esmeralda Morales strengthened her Big Sky MVP candidacy with 28 points, five assists and five rebounds to lead the way for a Montana State team that saw two of its best players go down with injuries despite the lopsided margin.
“You want to see somebody that’s going to play in the WNBA, or at least at a high level professionally, we have the best set up professional in the league on our team right now,” Binford said. “She is going to play at the next level and nobody can do what she can do. She is that good. She is clutch. She makes everybody on the floor better.”
Although there were several exclamation points within the win, perhaps the biggest came in the final 12 seconds of the first half. Morales hit a patented step-back 3-pointer to the glee of the crowd.
It seemed like the clock would just tick away, but instead, the Bobcats forced another turnover, allowing Martin to have one more chance. She found herself on a fast-break but realized she could not get all the way to the rim. Instead, the lanky wing gathered herself and cast a buzzer-beater from just inside the half-court line that banked in to give Montana State a 57-30 halftime advantage.
“The clock was running down and I realized that if I continued running, it was going to be a lay-up from the free throw line, so I just popped and stopped and got up a back-board three and we were hyped.” Martin said.
Montana State’s offensive onslaught was so thorough, the Bobcats actually only made two 3-pointers after halftime (after going 7-of-10 from deep in the 2nd quarter alone) and only shot 35 percent in the fourth quarter, yet still almost hit 100 points. A huge factor: MSU scored 38 points off its 28 turnovers.
MSU’s most thorough, dominant performance in rivalry history came even with two starters getting knocked out of the game. Marah Dykstra, a front-runner for first-team All-Big Sky honors, played just 5:37 because she suffered an ankle injury that kept her out from the second quarter on. Junior guard Dylan Phillip, a player Binford calls “MSU’s glue girl”, suffered what appeared to be a serious injury to her right knee and did not return. She played just 14:53.
“We have depth, we have players, but as a leader, and as a team, we have to continue to say, ‘we can’t have those emotions right now, especially with the environment, so we just continued to try to do this for them,” Morales said. “It hurts, it hurts our team, but we have to go out there and go harder.”
With those two on the bench, MSU unleashed its reserve squad in full force. That unit helped push Montana State on a 17-3 run in the third quarter to push the lead to 78-38 with 2:28 left in the frame in a game where the hosts never trailed.
Taylee Chirrick, the front-runner for Big Sky Freshman of the Year and a prime candidate for Defensive Player of the Year, continued her breakout season. She scored 13 points and snared three of MSU’s 21 steals on an afternoon where the hosts forced 28 Lady Griz turnovers.
“This is one of our four rings, one of our goals, to sweep Montana, and we just did that so this is super exciting for this team,” Chirrick said.
“When you have a lead, you have to stay focused and come together as a team.”
Lexi Deden, a senior who was granted another year because of her injury history, scored 10 points and grabbed three rebounds in 17 minutes of action. Taylor Janssen, a senior who started last season but has accepted a bench role graciously, scored 11 points
“Our bench was absolutely incredible today,” Binford said. “Our depth is what allows us to do what we do: we have a bench, we have depth to handle certain situations.”
Montana State now turns the page to the final home weekend of the season. No Bobcat team has ever gone undefeated in conference play. MSU has three games left in the regular season to make that a reality.”
“This shows how much we work every single day, it shows how much we are committed,” Morales said. “We just have to continue our 1-0 mindset and not get complacent because March is coming and anything can happen in March. We want to continue to grow and continue to move the needle.”
Photos by Jason Bacaj. All Rights Reserved.
