This is an interesting GoGriz article - I assume these GoGriz articles are written by students - nice job. The Lady Griz have a lot of strength coming back next year - McKenzie Johnson is a gem at the point, as are Sophia Stiles, Madi Schoening, Taylor Goligoski, and Gabi Harrington at the guard spot, and inside, there are solid players in 6-2 junior Emma Stockholm and Jace Henderson. Redshirt freshman Abby Anderson is the unknown player at this point.
It seems to me that the Lady Griz will be in great shape at guard, but lacking depth down low and in the post. But, if no help arrives from the recruits, we will still be ahead of where we were the last two years. With redshirts Abby Anderson and Gabi Harrington and a batch of newcomers, we should be more than competitive.
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Here is the Gogriz Gabi Harrington article:
Her best performance in a Lady Griz uniform, statistically anyway, came in a game that feels like it was played years ago.
Montana was facing Massachusetts in Iowa City, one day after the Lady Griz, playing with a green roster and for a mostly new coaching staff, had lost by 41 points to South Dakota State. The Minutewomen had lost by the very same margin to Iowa.
It was Sunday at the Hawkeye Challenge, three games into the 2016-17 season, four days before Thanksgiving, and in a mostly empty arena in southeast Iowa, Gabi Harrington was feeling it.
Montana trailed by eight going into the fourth quarter, but Harrington's third 3-pointer of the game eight seconds into the final period sparked a comeback.
Taylor Goligoski, like Harrington, playing her first season of college basketball, gave Montana its first lead of the second half, 57-56, with a little more than a minute remaining.
After the teams combined to miss four shots -- one resulting from a block by Harrington, her only one of the season -- McKenzie Johnston, another first-year player, hit one of two free throws with 10 seconds left to put her team up 58-56.
It wasn't a complex action that led to Massachusetts getting an open look for what would, upon video review, be the game-winning 3-pointer at the buzzer.
The Minutewomen simply set a double screen away from the ball. But Harrington got caught, communication to cover the threat didn't happen, and Hailey Leidel hit what was only Massachusetts' second 3-pointer of the day. Minutewomen 59, Lady Griz 58.
It was the typical give-and-take of relying on freshmen, which injuries forced Montana to do a lot of in that 23-loss season. Harrington scored a team-high 15 points in the game, but a defensive breakdown of which she was a part led to a heartbreaking loss.
It took that season for Harrington to learn an important lesson: She wasn't quite prepared for the situation she was put in.
"In high school you could do whatever you wanted," she said this week, coming off the redshirt season that came in her second year rather than the more traditional first year.
"You didn't need to have that good of fundamental skills to be a good defender, so I never had a coach telling me I was messing up. When you get to college, it can be very humbling."
Indeed. To defend Massachusetts' game-winning play, there needed to be anticipation, communication, intention, an understanding of time, situation and who the ball might be going to. There had to be spatial awareness of the different moving parts, how two were moving to free up one.
"Defensively I had a lot of trouble that first year," Harrington says. "I'd be focused on one thing, and you need to be focused on more than one thing."
Just like her team, Harrington had her ups and downs that season. For everyone involved there were much more of the latter.
When it was over, after Montana had lost to Idaho State in the first round of the Big Sky Conference tournament in Reno, Harrington met with coach Shannon Schweyen at her end-of-season meeting and was given an option.
Did she want to use the redshirt season in 2017-18 that she missed out on as a true freshman?
"I thought about it all throughout the summer and into the fall," says Harrington, whose older brother, Andy, is an assistant coach at the College of Idaho.
"I discussed it with my brother, and he thought it would be a really good idea because I missed out on it my freshman year."
And so her mind was made up. She would redshirt and get the practice time and reps she needed on the defensive end while working to improve an offensive game that was Division I-ready from the day she stepped foot on campus.
But then it started happening again. Kayleigh Valley, done. Alycia Harris, done. And Goligoski was on the sideline as well with a leg injury that was resisting diagnosis and slow to heal.
Might Harrington be pressed into service for the second straight season because of things that had happened outside of her control?
"I had no idea what was going to happen," she says. "With all the injuries, I was just really confused at the time. I didn't know what was going to happen."
No one did, and that included the morning of Nov. 13. Montana was in Laramie, preparing to face Wyoming that evening in the season opener. Harrington awoke not knowing if she was going to play against the Cowgirls or if she was going to play at all that season.
A text message from Schweyen invited Harrington to the coach's room at the team hotel. The time to make a decision was at hand.
"She told me, 'You're playing really well, and I think we might need you out there, but if you want to redshirt, we'll give it to you,' " recalls Harrington.
Coach and player reached an understanding, the same one Johnston had agreed to two years earlier. Harrington would suit up for the Wyoming game but wouldn't be used unless the worst happened, if an injury occurred to one of Montana's guards that looked like it might be season-ending.
That arrangement would last five games. If Harrington hadn't been called on by then, she would turn in her uniform for the season. But not her practice gear, because there was work to be done.
"It was weird sitting there (during the Wyoming game)," she says. "It felt like my whole college career was on the line. It was hard to get prepared for that game. If someone went down, I knew I was going in, but I just had this feeling I was going to redshirt."
She did, and that's why you've most likely forgotten about her. You know who played last season and which of those Lady Griz are coming back. You know the four incoming freshmen who are counting down the days until they're on campus.
Just don't forget about Harrington.
"She was so much more relaxed in practice this season than she was her first year here," says Schweyen. "We recruited that class on the assumption we were going to redshirt them when they got here, and because of some injuries that first year, Gabi ended up playing.
"We're fortunate she was able to do it this year. She made some big strides. A lot of times kids will redshirt and they don't make a lot of growth in areas you hope they will. It was encouraging to see how much better she got as the season went along. It was a valuable experience for her."
For all the benefit last winter was to Harrington, it came at a cost to the team. Because who doesn't remember Harrington going 5 for 5 from the arc in Montana's two exhibition games her freshman season?
The 3-point shot and the threat of the three, which leads to a sweet pump-fake-and-go dribble jumper, are the strongest parts of her game. And the arc was a sore spot for the Lady Griz last season, from where they shot just 27.5 percent.
The 137 triples Montana hit as a team last season? The exact number Idaho's Taylor Pierce hit by herself to establish a new Big Sky record and eight more than Pierce's teammate, Mikayla Ferenz, connected on.
"We missed Gabi's 3-point shooting this year," says Schweyen. "What we gave up by not having her on the floor was something we missed."
It took time for Montana's defensive concepts to take hold, even after playing that first full season. Harrington worked at it from October through January before the light fully came on.
She was seeing the entire floor on the defensive end for the first time, where she needed to be, who might need help, how all five pieces worked together. No longer was she focused on just one thing, like she was able to do in high school. And she was ready to show it off. But she couldn't.
"My offensive game has always come to me. I've always felt comfortable in that situation. After I got the defensive part down, I felt like I was ready to go," says Harrington, who can pinpoint when that feeling struck her last winter. The week of the Montana State game in Bozeman.
"I felt by the middle of the season I was ready. I felt like I was doing really well and had gotten used to the pace of play. My whole life I've had confidence, but my freshman year I didn't feel very confident. This year it finally came back, right around when we played at MSU. I need to get back out there."
She's shed 10 pounds from her freshman year but has gotten stronger. "I lowered my body fat. It was pretty impressive," Harrington says, providing a window into the deep reservoir of belief she has in herself. "It's motivating to know that I'm ready and confident now to play at this level."
Expect a steady dose of post isolations next season for Harrington, who at 5-foot-9 has the size and strength to work similarly sized or smaller defenders in the paint, much like Kellie Rubel did to win a share of the 2014-15 Big Sky MVP award.
"I have a good fade-away jump shot, or I can take a girl and go up strong," says Harrington.
But it's the perimeter where Harrington is at her best. And from her perch near the end of the bench last winter, she saw before her eyes the on-going transformation of the league. It's easy to dismiss it as "small ball," but it's working. The spacing, the multiple threats from the arc.
The 3-point shot ended Montana's season in Reno last month, as Northern Colorado rained down 12 on the Lady Griz, seven in the first quarter alone to grab a lead it would never relinquish.
Three days later, the Bears went 14 for 25 from the arc against Idaho in the title game, as a once little-known and little-recruited player, Savannah Smith, all 66 inches of her, scored 34 points to add tournament MVP to her regular-season MVP trophy.
Of the 15 players voted first-, second- or third-team All-Big Sky last season, only one, North Dakota's Lexi Klabo, was a true post player. Everyone else was able to play out to 21 feet.
Or beyond, which was the land of Smith, who doesn't need anyone's help to create a shot for herself. Just a great handle, some misdirection and the ability to exploit whatever mistake her defender makes.
And there was Harrington, taking notes.
"This summer I'm going to work on my hesitation moves and fakes up top, just like (Smith and Ferenz) have, just like they play, so I can be somewhat like them but in my own way," she says.
It's not only been a boon to Harrington's game, has redshirting, but it's come with some enlightenment as well. It was a different route she took, but had she not played that first season, she never would have learned her weaknesses.
Had she redshirted that first year, she would have had to take her coaches' word for it that she wasn't ready. Maybe she just needed to see it for herself.
"Everyone at this level was a stud in high school, so you think redshirting is bad, like it's an admission that you're not ready or good enough," says Harrington.
"I saw it as a bad thing, but I wished I hadn't. Now I'm thankful. I haven't been this excited to play basketball my whole life. I'm ready for it."
It seems to me that the Lady Griz will be in great shape at guard, but lacking depth down low and in the post. But, if no help arrives from the recruits, we will still be ahead of where we were the last two years. With redshirts Abby Anderson and Gabi Harrington and a batch of newcomers, we should be more than competitive.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is the Gogriz Gabi Harrington article:
Her best performance in a Lady Griz uniform, statistically anyway, came in a game that feels like it was played years ago.
Montana was facing Massachusetts in Iowa City, one day after the Lady Griz, playing with a green roster and for a mostly new coaching staff, had lost by 41 points to South Dakota State. The Minutewomen had lost by the very same margin to Iowa.
It was Sunday at the Hawkeye Challenge, three games into the 2016-17 season, four days before Thanksgiving, and in a mostly empty arena in southeast Iowa, Gabi Harrington was feeling it.
Montana trailed by eight going into the fourth quarter, but Harrington's third 3-pointer of the game eight seconds into the final period sparked a comeback.
Taylor Goligoski, like Harrington, playing her first season of college basketball, gave Montana its first lead of the second half, 57-56, with a little more than a minute remaining.
After the teams combined to miss four shots -- one resulting from a block by Harrington, her only one of the season -- McKenzie Johnston, another first-year player, hit one of two free throws with 10 seconds left to put her team up 58-56.
It wasn't a complex action that led to Massachusetts getting an open look for what would, upon video review, be the game-winning 3-pointer at the buzzer.
The Minutewomen simply set a double screen away from the ball. But Harrington got caught, communication to cover the threat didn't happen, and Hailey Leidel hit what was only Massachusetts' second 3-pointer of the day. Minutewomen 59, Lady Griz 58.
It was the typical give-and-take of relying on freshmen, which injuries forced Montana to do a lot of in that 23-loss season. Harrington scored a team-high 15 points in the game, but a defensive breakdown of which she was a part led to a heartbreaking loss.
It took that season for Harrington to learn an important lesson: She wasn't quite prepared for the situation she was put in.
"In high school you could do whatever you wanted," she said this week, coming off the redshirt season that came in her second year rather than the more traditional first year.
"You didn't need to have that good of fundamental skills to be a good defender, so I never had a coach telling me I was messing up. When you get to college, it can be very humbling."
Indeed. To defend Massachusetts' game-winning play, there needed to be anticipation, communication, intention, an understanding of time, situation and who the ball might be going to. There had to be spatial awareness of the different moving parts, how two were moving to free up one.
"Defensively I had a lot of trouble that first year," Harrington says. "I'd be focused on one thing, and you need to be focused on more than one thing."
Just like her team, Harrington had her ups and downs that season. For everyone involved there were much more of the latter.
When it was over, after Montana had lost to Idaho State in the first round of the Big Sky Conference tournament in Reno, Harrington met with coach Shannon Schweyen at her end-of-season meeting and was given an option.
Did she want to use the redshirt season in 2017-18 that she missed out on as a true freshman?
"I thought about it all throughout the summer and into the fall," says Harrington, whose older brother, Andy, is an assistant coach at the College of Idaho.
"I discussed it with my brother, and he thought it would be a really good idea because I missed out on it my freshman year."
And so her mind was made up. She would redshirt and get the practice time and reps she needed on the defensive end while working to improve an offensive game that was Division I-ready from the day she stepped foot on campus.
But then it started happening again. Kayleigh Valley, done. Alycia Harris, done. And Goligoski was on the sideline as well with a leg injury that was resisting diagnosis and slow to heal.
Might Harrington be pressed into service for the second straight season because of things that had happened outside of her control?
"I had no idea what was going to happen," she says. "With all the injuries, I was just really confused at the time. I didn't know what was going to happen."
No one did, and that included the morning of Nov. 13. Montana was in Laramie, preparing to face Wyoming that evening in the season opener. Harrington awoke not knowing if she was going to play against the Cowgirls or if she was going to play at all that season.
A text message from Schweyen invited Harrington to the coach's room at the team hotel. The time to make a decision was at hand.
"She told me, 'You're playing really well, and I think we might need you out there, but if you want to redshirt, we'll give it to you,' " recalls Harrington.
Coach and player reached an understanding, the same one Johnston had agreed to two years earlier. Harrington would suit up for the Wyoming game but wouldn't be used unless the worst happened, if an injury occurred to one of Montana's guards that looked like it might be season-ending.
That arrangement would last five games. If Harrington hadn't been called on by then, she would turn in her uniform for the season. But not her practice gear, because there was work to be done.
"It was weird sitting there (during the Wyoming game)," she says. "It felt like my whole college career was on the line. It was hard to get prepared for that game. If someone went down, I knew I was going in, but I just had this feeling I was going to redshirt."
She did, and that's why you've most likely forgotten about her. You know who played last season and which of those Lady Griz are coming back. You know the four incoming freshmen who are counting down the days until they're on campus.
Just don't forget about Harrington.
"She was so much more relaxed in practice this season than she was her first year here," says Schweyen. "We recruited that class on the assumption we were going to redshirt them when they got here, and because of some injuries that first year, Gabi ended up playing.
"We're fortunate she was able to do it this year. She made some big strides. A lot of times kids will redshirt and they don't make a lot of growth in areas you hope they will. It was encouraging to see how much better she got as the season went along. It was a valuable experience for her."
For all the benefit last winter was to Harrington, it came at a cost to the team. Because who doesn't remember Harrington going 5 for 5 from the arc in Montana's two exhibition games her freshman season?
The 3-point shot and the threat of the three, which leads to a sweet pump-fake-and-go dribble jumper, are the strongest parts of her game. And the arc was a sore spot for the Lady Griz last season, from where they shot just 27.5 percent.
The 137 triples Montana hit as a team last season? The exact number Idaho's Taylor Pierce hit by herself to establish a new Big Sky record and eight more than Pierce's teammate, Mikayla Ferenz, connected on.
"We missed Gabi's 3-point shooting this year," says Schweyen. "What we gave up by not having her on the floor was something we missed."
It took time for Montana's defensive concepts to take hold, even after playing that first full season. Harrington worked at it from October through January before the light fully came on.
She was seeing the entire floor on the defensive end for the first time, where she needed to be, who might need help, how all five pieces worked together. No longer was she focused on just one thing, like she was able to do in high school. And she was ready to show it off. But she couldn't.
"My offensive game has always come to me. I've always felt comfortable in that situation. After I got the defensive part down, I felt like I was ready to go," says Harrington, who can pinpoint when that feeling struck her last winter. The week of the Montana State game in Bozeman.
"I felt by the middle of the season I was ready. I felt like I was doing really well and had gotten used to the pace of play. My whole life I've had confidence, but my freshman year I didn't feel very confident. This year it finally came back, right around when we played at MSU. I need to get back out there."
She's shed 10 pounds from her freshman year but has gotten stronger. "I lowered my body fat. It was pretty impressive," Harrington says, providing a window into the deep reservoir of belief she has in herself. "It's motivating to know that I'm ready and confident now to play at this level."
Expect a steady dose of post isolations next season for Harrington, who at 5-foot-9 has the size and strength to work similarly sized or smaller defenders in the paint, much like Kellie Rubel did to win a share of the 2014-15 Big Sky MVP award.
"I have a good fade-away jump shot, or I can take a girl and go up strong," says Harrington.
But it's the perimeter where Harrington is at her best. And from her perch near the end of the bench last winter, she saw before her eyes the on-going transformation of the league. It's easy to dismiss it as "small ball," but it's working. The spacing, the multiple threats from the arc.
The 3-point shot ended Montana's season in Reno last month, as Northern Colorado rained down 12 on the Lady Griz, seven in the first quarter alone to grab a lead it would never relinquish.
Three days later, the Bears went 14 for 25 from the arc against Idaho in the title game, as a once little-known and little-recruited player, Savannah Smith, all 66 inches of her, scored 34 points to add tournament MVP to her regular-season MVP trophy.
Of the 15 players voted first-, second- or third-team All-Big Sky last season, only one, North Dakota's Lexi Klabo, was a true post player. Everyone else was able to play out to 21 feet.
Or beyond, which was the land of Smith, who doesn't need anyone's help to create a shot for herself. Just a great handle, some misdirection and the ability to exploit whatever mistake her defender makes.
And there was Harrington, taking notes.
"This summer I'm going to work on my hesitation moves and fakes up top, just like (Smith and Ferenz) have, just like they play, so I can be somewhat like them but in my own way," she says.
It's not only been a boon to Harrington's game, has redshirting, but it's come with some enlightenment as well. It was a different route she took, but had she not played that first season, she never would have learned her weaknesses.
Had she redshirted that first year, she would have had to take her coaches' word for it that she wasn't ready. Maybe she just needed to see it for herself.
"Everyone at this level was a stud in high school, so you think redshirting is bad, like it's an admission that you're not ready or good enough," says Harrington.
"I saw it as a bad thing, but I wished I hadn't. Now I'm thankful. I haven't been this excited to play basketball my whole life. I'm ready for it."
