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LadyGriz Nate Harris new head coach of the Lady Griz!

gotgame75 said:
What a ridiculous response. No one said it was that simple, only that it's worthwhile.

And the fact is I have never seen a single out of state female African-American player mentioned as being on our recruiting radar basically ever. Feel free to correct me if you have information to the contrary.

Everyone knows one of Robin's weaknesses was his inability/lack of desire to expand his recruiting footprint beyond a very small region.

What I can say for certain is that we've had 2 or 3 black Lady Griz in the entire history of the program. And that is totally ridiculous in my opinion. Certainly we can do better than less than one every decade.
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What is ridicules, the sarcasm? Billingsgriz has repeatedly said it was simple. I don't disagree that the lack of black female basketball players is crazy, but that history, along with the lack of diversity, along with the nuances of recruiting black female athletes make Missoula, heck Montana, a hard sell. There is a reason that Sacramento and Portland have an easier time recruiting black females, and it doesn't center around having a black coach on staff. I am totally onboard with recruiting more black females, and maybe they will reach your goal of one every 10 years.
 
HelenaHandBasket said:
What is ridicules, the sarcasm? Billingsgriz has repeatedly said it was simple. I don't disagree that the lack of black female basketball players is crazy, but that history, along with the lack of diversity, along with the nuances of recruiting black female athletes make Missoula, heck Montana, a hard sell. There is a reason that Sacramento and Portland have an easier time recruiting black females, and it doesn't center around having a black coach on staff. I am totally onboard with recruiting more black females, and maybe they will reach your goal of one every 10 years.
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" along with the nuances of recruiting Black females"= bulls__t !!! They are the same " nuances" as recruiting all young women student athletes, Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, Native and/or young Black male student athletes--Black girls are not fragile wallflowers !!!

And no where did I say recruiting Black young women was simple, I said recruiting black girls was not complex. Where I went to school there was such an aniimal as a medium or moderate level of difficulty, between complex and simple, its not always all one or the other. . Once a girl--White, Black, Asian, Native, or Hispanic tells a coach she's interested, the process sounds complex to me when scholarships, other financial aid, housing, travel to and from home to see family, meal plans for athletes, team travel schedules, medical care due to a basketball injury, whether a girl redshirts or plays right away, etc. are discussed between coach and prospective player. ( I got that impression when Coach DeCuire and staff wanted--for good reason--Joe Pridgen to play for us this past season, but we didn't have any scholarships left. )

And chat, every state in the nation that has boys basketball, by state law and maybe federal as well, has to offer girls basketball unless the school is an all boys' school or they don't have enough girls. Softball, soccer and volleyball are not the most popular sports either for black high-school or college girls--basketball is, thus there are good female black high-school hoopsters available to recruit if a school is willing to recruit them !!!
 
billingsgriz said:
" along with the nuances of recruiting Black females"= bulls__t !!! They are the same " nuances" as recruiting all young women student athletes, Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, Native and/or young Black male student athletes--Black girls are not fragile wallflowers !!!
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This is why you are struggling with the entire concept. Also positively sure that I never categorized black females as "fragile wallflowers", you did that.
 
Looking at the old media guides, I believe UM has had a total of 5 black players (Vicki Austin, Shauntee Nance-Johnson, and Tianna Ware under Selvig and Katerina Tsineke and Keeli Burton-Oliver under Holsinger). There might be more that have/claim that heritage but those are the apparent ones from photos.

Vicki Austin was also on Selvig's coaching staff for a year as a student assistant after she was done playing. Too bad she didn't stay on longer.

I do remember some IG/Twitter posts of Holsinger offering/bringing in for visits a few black recruits but unfortunately none of them chose UM. I'll see if I can find the old recruiting threads and see where they ended up.

--EDIT--
Nevermind, the old recruiting thread is lumped together with multiple years and older social media doesn't display properly so it makes it a hassle to track down the posts I remember. Here's the thread, though:
https://egriz.com/threads/lady-griz-recruiting-2025.90565/
 
gotgame75 said:
Where is this assertion that it should be relatively easy? No one has claimed that in this entire thread.

All I know is having 2 black players in the entire 40+ year history of a Division 1 program is an extremely low bar that we should strive to improve. Do you disagree?
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DoubleNicks said:
Looking at the old media guides, I believe UM has had a total of 5 black players (Vicki Austin, Shauntee Nance-Johnson, and Tianna Ware under Selvig and Katerina Tsineke and Keeli Burton-Oliver under Holsinger). There might be more that have/claim that heritage but those are the apparent ones from photos.

Vicki Austin was also on Selvig's coaching staff for a year as a student assistant after she was done playing. Too bad she didn't stay on longer.

I do remember some IG/Twitter posts of Holsinger offering/bringing in for visits a few black recruits but unfortunately none of them chose UM. I'll see if I can find the old recruiting threads and see where they ended up.

--EDIT--
Nevermind, the old recruiting thread is lumped together with multiple years and older social media doesn't display properly so it makes it a hassle to track down the posts I remember. Here's the thread, though:
https://egriz.com/threads/lady-griz-recruiting-2025.90565/
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Tsineke is of Greek-African descent, so not really applicable in terms of the discussion on recruiting African-American females.

So 4 African American women in 40+ years of Lady Griz basketball. Not saying it will be easy, but we can surely do better than 1 per decade.
 
Coral Old Bull, a 5-10 All-State Forward, and a Crow girl, Class A All State, First Team, just led Billings Central to a hard-foughr Class A state championship win over Dillon 54-52 here at First Interstate Arena in Billings on Saturday by scoring 15 points, including the buzzer beater with 1.6 seconds left, and grabbed 11 boards in the Lady Rams latest Montana Class State A Championship, finishing their season @ 24-0. And Coral is a senior.

I hope Coach Harris and Woolley give Coral a strong look. I think Coral will be playing college ball in Montana, I just don't know if it will be MSUB or Rocky here in Billings, MSU or best yet, with our LG in Missoula, though MSUB is a real close second in my mind for obvious reasons !!!

Go GRIZ !!!
 
billingsgriz said:
Coral Old Bull, a 5-10 All-State Forward, and a Crow girl, Class A All State, First Team, just led Billings Central to a hard-foughr Class A state championship win over Dillon 54-52 here at First Interstate Arena in Billings on Saturday by scoring 15 points, including the buzzer beater with 1.6 seconds left, and grabbed 11 boards in the Lady Rams latest Montana Class State A Championship, finishing their season @ 24-0. And Coral is a senior.

I hope Coach Harris and Woolley give Coral a strong look. I think Coral will be playing college ball in Montana, I just don't know if it will be MSUB or Rocky here in Billings, MSU or best yet, with our LG in Missoula, though MSUB is a real close second in my mind for obvious reasons !!!

Go GRIZ !!!
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Committed to Dickenson about a month or so ago.
 
billingsgriz said:
Well, our men's team is full of Black kids like Money Williams that indeed went from San Francisco-Oakland, a very dense urban population, to Missoula. Not all Black kids from big cities or their suburbs want to come to Missoula to go to school @ UM, but some do--these kids want out of the Big City. I have friends in The Bay Area and Vancouver, Washington tell me they no longer go to Downtown San Francisco or Portland because of all the problems with drugs, homelessness, and crime in these downtowns.

If we want to recruit Black star girl's basketball players and we should, Seattle-Tacoma, Portland-Vancouver, San Francisco-Oakland, San Jose and LA are probably our prime targets. And if we don't recruit some really good Black girls, our LG team will continue to struggle due to a lack of strength, speed and athleticism.

Despite NIL, Ohio State, Michigan and Oregon, both Travis DeCuire and Justin Green and Bobby Hauck continue to successfully recruit many star Black athletes, most from big cities or their suburbs. Without those Black student athletes on both our men's basketball team and football team, those teams would not be successful on the court or football field. Sixty years ago, if Don Haskins had decided not to first start calling the families of star Black boys' high-school basketball players in Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore and then by car, bus, train and plane travel up and down The East Coast recruiting those kids in person to attend a school they had never heard of in a place they couldn't even find on a map but instead stayed in his office in El Paso in extreme West Texas in the middle of nowhere repeatedly telling himself why he couldn't recruit Black kids to come play at Texas Western against schools in The Jim Crow South, he would have never left West Texas and New Mexico to recruit. There would have been no " Glory Road." But Coach Haskins had a " can-do" attitude instead of a " can't-do" attitude even though many Black families and their sons rejected him and Texas Western, some did not and found themselves on a bus, train or plane to El Paso to play for Coach Haskins and Texas Western and became part of basketball history.

I believe if we drop the " can't do" attitude and instead adopt the " can-do" attitude and like Coach Haskins, DeCuire, Green and Hauck, we too will be successful in recruiting some star Black girls' basketball players to UM. I would much rather be a Happy Warrior than Danny or Debbie Downer, wouldn't you ?
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Man I'm out. You're again talking about men's basketball and football again and I was trying to say how they're two different animals. Plus I just saw the news that Natalie Picton entered the portal and that one hurts. She was my favorite Cat player. I was so excited to see her continued development and now she's leaving. So I don't have the stomach to keep going back and forth. Sorry BG.
 
Allezchat said:
Man I'm out. You're again talking about men's basketball and football again and I was trying to say how they're two different animals. Plus I just saw the news that Natalie Picton entered the portal and that one hurts. She was my favorite Cat player. I was so excited to see her continued development and now she's leaving. So I don't have the stomach to keep going back and forth. Sorry BG.
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Sorry about Picton, Chat, that sucks !!!
 
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