Following last Wednesday’s meeting with the local media, Travis DeCuire gave a wink to whoever was looking and said, “I’m about to make these guys not like me today!”
The passing remark was a symbolic nod to the fact that yes indeed, this Montana men’s basketball team is different then the squads DeCuire has led in the post-pandemic era, an era that has been increasingly difficult for mid-major powers like UM to navigate.
This week, DeCuire’s Griz were coming off arguably their most pivotal weekend of the season. The Griz had gone on the road and beat up on Northern Colorado to avenge an embarrassing home loss from earlier in the year. That win in Greeley not only exacted revenge for UM’s only home defeat this season but also helped Montana ascend into a tie with the Bears for first place in the Big Sky Conference standings.
DeCuire’s squad followed up that win over the Bears with a gritty victory at Northern Arizona to push its winning streak to six in a row. So why was Montana’s 11th-year head coach dead set on getting after his guys the day before the Griz hosted Idaho State?
Because DeCuire has always been the type of head coach to challenge his team. And he loves the way this particular Griz team responds.
“When we don’t practice with edge, the staff isn’t happy, let’s do it again, let’s run, let’s get better,” DeCuire said. “I liked Monday’s practice, I did not like Tuesday’s practice. We watched some film and I was like, ‘guys, we are going to lose.’
“Then we came back Wednesday and had a great practice. We need that edge regardless of who we are playing. We can’t come out soft.”
The ability to respond, not only to DeCuire’s commanding coaching style, but also to the adverse moments that trademark individual basketball games and the arc of a college basketball season, has been one of, if not THE, primary factor in UM’s recent surge to the top of the standings.
“Toughness is contagious,” DeCuire said. “We have some guys who bring the fight to you, defense, scrapping for loose balls, diving on the floor for a ball and it’s contagious. That’s really been the key for us.”
Following Saturday night’s 65-58 win over Weber State, Montana enters the stretch run of the regular season on an eight-game winning streak, eyeing its 12th Big Sky regular-season title as a program. A championship would serve as the 4th under DeCuire and the first since the 2018-2019 Griz earned its second straight league banner.
A renewed toughness stemming from the cohesion of nine new faces to the lineup (a school record), a collective willingness to win, and an unselfish style that has put every single Big Sky opponent on its heels over the last month has helped Montana position itself firmly in the driver’s seat of the Big Sky title race.
“There was definitely a turning point and that was getting embarrassed twice,” UM senior Te’Jon Sawyer said last week. “Northern Colorado came to Missoula and blew us out (81-57) worse than any Griz team under coach Trav. Then Idaho State, that was humiliating. Being embarrassed gave us a big chip. We knew we were good but something wasn’t clicking.
“But we talked it out like grown men and it’s been great since.”
It’s certainly been a little while since DeCuire had a team like the one he has this season. Montana won 20 games in DeCuire’s first season, sharing the conference title and hosting the last league tournament to be played on a champion’s home court before the Big Sky moved the tournament to a neutral site the following year in 2016.
Montana won 21 games the following year, advancing to a postseason tournament (the CBI in 2016, the NIT in 2015) for the second season in a row.
DeCuire’s third season was a transitional one while a collection of highly impactful transfers, including future two-time first-team All-Big Sky point guard Ahmaad Rorie, sat out because of the old NCAA transfer rules.
DeCuire’s fourth and fifth were among the best seasons in the history of Montana men’s basketball. And that’s saying something, considering coaches like Judd Heathcote, Jim Brandenburgh, Stew Morrill, Blaine Taylor, Larry Krystkowiak and Wayne Tinkle preceded DeCuire at his alma mater.
The Griz went 32-6 in Big Sky play and 52-17 overall during the 2017-18 and 2018-19 seasons, running through the league and advancing to the NCAA Tournament two years in a row. Only Krystkowiak (2005, 2006) and Tinkle (2012, 2013) had ever led the Griz to consecutive Big Dances.
We’ll never know what might’ve happened to conclude the 2019-2020 season. That Montana team finished third in the regular season, but had a talented core led by Sayeed Pridgett that certainly could have made another run through the conference tournament bracket.
Instead, that Big Sky tournament and the NCAA Tournament were called off when COVID-19 wiped out sporting events across the globe that spring, costing Montana a chance to make an unprecedented third straight run to March Madness.
The one common trait that each of the teams shared during the first half of DeCuire’s tenure was the fortitude to overcome adversity within the scope of the season as well as to handle DeCuire’s intense coaching methods.
Players like Rorie and Pridgett defined this dynamic. Any time DeCuire would call a timeout and aggressively challenge them — some would say get in their faces — the two Griz alpha dogs would respond by playing better and better.
Since the pandemic, it’s not to say DeCuire’s teams have been unresponsive as much as simply different in personality. Montana finished above .500 every year between 2020 and 2023 but hovered between third and sixth in the Big Sky standings and never won 20 games.
Last season’s Griz broke through to win 24 games, finish second in the league and make a run to the Big Sky tournament title game, only to get avalanched by rival Montana State.
While last year’s team had all sorts of sweet shooting and plenty of showmanship, each strength personified by fan favorite silky swingman Aanen Moody, the team still didn’t seem to perfectly align with DeCuire’s edgy coaching style.
DeCuire likes teams that can intimidate and dictate with physical defense. He likes teams that share the ball on the way to uber-efficient shooting percentages.
And more than anything, he likes teams that put ego aside and prioritize the ultimate goal: winning.
“Wanting to win has been the most important thing for these guys coming together,” DeCuire said the day before beating Idaho State for the 20th time in 22 career matchups. “To win, you do the things necessary to score more points than your opponent. The hard part for us was learning how. Learning how to play with other good players, learning how to defer, learning how to win, learning what it means when you might not take the shot or make the pass.”
DeCuire said he put a high priority in recruiting on trying to find players whose No. 1 priority was chasing championships. Although it’s been a learning process for scoring-minded players like Malik Moore and Kai Johnson to learn to play with one another, a learning process for Williams to come off the bench, a learning process to learn how to play with multiple bigs like high-energy senior Joe Pridgen and his hulking classmate Sawyer, the Griz have found a way to do it.
“It’s hard to teach, it’s hard to learn when you have goals and aspirations of your own,” DeCuire said. “But I saw the ability in our staff and the ability in our program to develop it. In a short period of time, I was not sure. When you’re recruiting, guys say all the right things, winning is important to them so you assume it’s in them. But you don’t know how long it takes or if you can get to that point together.
“We assumed it was there but we didn’t know until we broke a sweat with them.”
This Griz team seems to have that desire to win. Following a 86-61 loss at Idaho State in which UM lost the second half 50-19 — a loss Sawyer called “an embarrassment” and Brandon Whitney called “a wakeup call”— Montana has been a well-oiled machine.
Thursday, the Griz avenged that loss to ISU by drilling the Bengals 81-68 in Missoula. Big Sky Top Reserve candidate Money Williams continued his stellar play off the bench, slicing his way to 17 points. Moore, a former transfer from Pepperdine, shined during the second half, putting together a personal 5-0 run that included a two-handed breakaway slam dunk and a pump fake swish on a transition 3-pointer on the way to 10 points. And Whitney, UM’s soft-spoken and steady fifth-year senior, continued to thrive in the role as closer, putting the Bengals away with six points in the final three minutes.
The Griz saw five players score between 10 and 17 points while Sawyer scored eight. The balanced scoring marked the sixth time during the winning streak that at least five players have scored eight or more points for UM. On three occasions, five players have gotten into double figures scoring and one time, six players scored 10 or more in a single game.
“We refuse to be complacent,” Sawyer said. “We always want to have an edge, that chip on our shoulder and never be comfortable. The whole league is ready to take our heads off so we have to keep getting better as a team.”
Northern Colorado took one on the chin Saturday, losing 82-71 at Portland State, meaning the Griz sit alone atop the standings.
The Griz play at rival Montana State on Saturday, then at Sac State and Portland State before returning home for a late-night home finale (9 p.m.) against Eastern Washington on Monday, March 3.
The Big Sky Tournament runs March 8-13 in Boise, Idaho.
To this point, this Griz team has responded like DeCuire wants. If the UM can continue its cohesive winning ways, Montana might hang another banner and head back to the Big Dance.
“I prefer to be the aggressor,” DeCuire said. “We don’t necessarily feel the target because we are moving forward. We don’t look backward. I don’t look at the standings and look down. I just look forward to the next opponent.
“Each team we’ve had that’s been at the top of the standings has been different, was built different, had different mentalities to motivate one another. And this group is its own individual team.
“The most important thing for this group is to be a better basketball team in the next game than they were in the last game.”
