BOZEMAN – An early wakeup call and well-trod territory to Bozeman – there are worse ways (after a football campaign that stretched languorously into January) to be thrown into the deep end of basketball season.
It’s possible to ease yourself in, but why not go for the polar plunge of 6,500 fans in the Brick? That’s the way to do it – not meaningless non-conference games or the lazy January start of Big Sky play.
Instead, the marching band banging away, the inflatable T-Rex leading cheers in the student section, the flame machine making the whole arena smell like gasoline before tipoff and the Montana State fans banked up towards the rafters, row after row of white shirts creating a portable, temporary glacier in Bozeman.
That’s not all, because Saturday’s first meeting of the season between the Montana and Montana State men’s basketball teams, aside from the pageantry, also promised plenty of delicious on-court questions.
How would Matt Logie and his almost completely refurbished Montana State team handle their first taste of the rivalry?
What exactly is the deal with Travis DeCuire’s squad this year at Montana, with the Griz scoring points at a rate never before seen in DeCuire’s tenure but doing so without an obvious alpha dog?
Which of the early-season trends – Robert Ford III looking like a DPOY candidate and Brian Goracke looking like a top-tier scorer at Montana State; Dischon Thomas’ rim protection and Josh Vazquez’s increased role at Montana – were, in the breathless parlance of sports talk radio hosts everywhere, FOR REAL?
We got all of that in Montana’s 87-77 win Saturday – plus, happily, 40 minutes of a terrific point guard matchup, a game-deciding performance from an unexpected source and a litany of highlights on both sides.
“I’ve been watching basketball ever since I was a kid,” Montana wing Jaxon Nap said. “Those are the kind of environments that you see and you’re like, ‘Oh man, if I could ever be in that spot, that’d be awesome.’ And then to be able to be in that sort of environment and play with a bunch of teammates that I care a lot about … I wouldn’t trade that for anything.”
Montana’s Brandon Whitney and Montana State’s Robert Ford III, identically 6-feet-tall and afroed, combined for the finest two guard performances you’ll see this side of the Tower of London, matching each other with equal parts frenetic energy and icy control. Ford finished with 30 points, seven rebounds, three assists, five steals, a selection of street ball step-back jumpers and resolute drives to the bucket – and the loss.
Whitney eschewed the step-backs, kept the Larry Csonka drives and finished with 15 points, six rebounds, six assists – and the win.
Together, the two played almost the entire game – 38 minutes in the official box score for both combatants.
“I thought (Whitney) handled it extremely well,” DeCuire said. “You know, he was on an island a little bit. Both of them were. It’s going to be difficult to stand in front of guards like that, with the space that was provided for them, with the shooting around them. When you’re coming off those screens, it’s just really hard to get in front of guys. So, it was a phenomenal battle.”
The final result was due not so much to Whitney – although the Griz wouldn’t have won without him battling the incandescent Ford to a draw – as to two unlikely heroes off the Griz bench.
The 6-foot-7 sophomore Nap – as clear an archetype of a modern wing as you’ll find in a conference that doesn’t have many – scored a career-high 17 points, shooting 4 of 5 from the field and illustrating his potential with a combo of competent handles, troublesome long-armed defense and dead eye long-range shooting that included the dagger, a 3 from the wing that put the Griz up 82-71 with under 90 seconds left.
The 6-foot-8 junior Te’Jon Sawyer – as clear an archetype of a ground-bound post as you’ll find in a conference that has, seemingly, thousands – bullied Montana State for 16 points on 7 of 8 shooting, steamrolling his way to the rim for short jump hooks over either shoulder and, on one particularly nasty in-bounds play, pushing a Bobcats defender all the way out of the frame and holding his hands up until Vazquez noticed him for the obligatory dunk.
Altogether, Montana’s bench outscored Montana State’s 33 to 2, with all 33 of those points coming from Nap or Sawyer.
“We established the post with Te’Jon. Sixteen points in 16 minutes is phenomenal,” DeCuire said. “That softened up the pressure, the denial, the switching and all those things. … And then just in regards to Jaxon, we always talk about staying ready. We tightened up the rotation a while back and then one guy gets hurt, a second guy gets hurt. His name gets called, you have to be ready to play.
“I thought the second half against Northern Colorado, he played extremely well defensively. That carried over to the NAU game, and once again tonight. His number was called, he performed, and I thought that he had a lot to do with the win tonight.”
Those two trends painted the general outline of a game that, more than anything else, contained plenty of action as the Griz beat the ‘Cats for the 21st time in the last 25 tries, snapping a mini two-game skid in Bozeman in the process.
Montana, down early, took the lead on a 14-0 run, keyed by Laolu Oke’s steal-and-score and back-to-back 3s by Vazquez and Nap, that mirrored the Bobcat women’s identical skein from the first game of the doubleheader.
Three precise tic-tac-toe passes by Montana State got Goracke an open 3 that he curled in at the halftime buzzer, bringing the Bobcats within 38-36 at the break and forcing DeCuire, who had walked off the court casting his eyes to the heavens at his team’s defensive breakdown, back onto the floor (after all, his team was still winning) for a live interview.
In one representative sequence early in the second half, Vazquez and Whitney finished tough takes in the paint, sandwiched around an unlikely 3 by Montana State big Brandon Walker, before Goracke provided the exclamation point – a baseline drive and forced-home pseudo-dunk over two defenders, plus the foul.
Montana shot 61.5% for the game, with Montana State not that far behind at 55.4%.
“It was a great atmosphere, obviously,” said Montana State’s Brandon Walker, who finished 8 of 8 from the field for 18 points. “It’s my first Cat-Griz game, so it was pretty good to feel the energy, the fight out there. I want to thank the Bozeman community for coming out to this game. It was special.”
Aanen Moody, who’s struggled shooting (by his own lofty standards) early in the season, put the rope over his shoulder and hauled the Griz away shortly after that, hitting three 3s and scoring 11 points in a 15-9 run that pushed Montana’s lead from six to 12 with under eight minutes to go. Moody, who scored just two points in the first half, finished with 16.
“I think it’s just an example of picking my spots and waiting for my moments to come,” Moody said. “I wasn’t trying to force anything in the first half because we were playing so well offensively. I didn’t want to mess that up trying to hunt my own shots. But Te’Jon was scoring and Brandon was scoring and Vasquez was scoring. Eventually my opportunities were going to open up and it was just about making the most of those opportunities and, you know, luckily I did.”
The Griz coasted home from there, although the lack of suspense in a drawn-out final stanza didn’t detract from the pure joy of basketball, well-played in front of an engaged crowd.
Neither did our pesky pregame questions, forgotten in the adrenaline rush.
January, after all, is still two months away from March. There’s plenty of time for analysis and answers. Saturday, for the first time in a long time, there was just time for basketball. And that was enough.
“It’s special,” DeCuire said. “We talked to the guys a lot about being emotionally stable going into this game because we knew the crowd is going to be rowdy. Calls don’t always go your way. The ball doesn’t always bounce your way. And the team that can play through the emotions the best typically wins this game. I think that that helped us win.”
