What’s Up with Me and Montana Basketball?
I dunno. Wish I did.
I know I have a l-o-n-g passionate history with it.
As a little kid, my first heroes were Ray Howard and Zip Rhodes. The Griz in those days wore the striped pants that Indiana made so popular.
As a student, basketball was all the rage. You waited in line to get in. The atmosphere was insane, electric.
As an adult, living in the Bay Area, I’ve traveled over the years to Portland, Corvallis, Eugene, Reno, Stockton, San Jose, Stanford, Sacramento, Malibu, Los Angeles (both USC and UCLA) and of course across town to USF to watch “my Griz.”
I remember specific moments. Like asking Mike Montgomery early before a game if he planned to leave Montana.
“Make me an offer,” he said. (And Stanford did.)
Like Micheal Ray Richardson completely taking over a game at Pacific, while their coach yelled in vain for his kids to stop him. They couldn’t.
Or Wayne Tinkle standing pre-game in the lobby at USF, looming over a group of well-wishers and potential recruits, charming everybody.
Only two years ago, in Portland, I sneaked down during a time out to chat with Money Williams, sitting at the end of the bench with the injury that kept him out most of his freshman year. Wonderful kid. If character is destiny, he has a great future.
I like and respect Travis DeCuire for his character and his coaching ability, and know that if he left, the program would be in great hands with Chris Cobb (whose father I shared Voodoo Donuts with on a flight back from Portland.)
And yet...I dunno...when I go to egriz, I hardly check in on basketball anymore.
It’s not that I’m mad at anybody. Not raging for a change in the coaching staff or upset about the off-court behavior of the members of our team, as I was with football a few years ago. DeCuire has run a pretty clean program.
But then there’s this: Our program is in a rut, good enough to always be among the top teams in the Big Sky, but never good enough to achieve my dream of a Sweet 16—as we came very close to when Krysko was running this program.
The lack of a credible big man will continue to hurt us. Small ball is over but next year two more guards join a program that’s already loaded with guards. Our best big man during the DeCuire era was a Tinkle recruit.
The offense will continue to stall out for five to six minutes every few games, sometimes critical games, like the Big Sky championship game against the Bobcats in 2024, where we blew a six-point halftime lead and lost by 15.
I continue to pine for an offensive-minded coach such as we had in Ken Bone during the first years of the DeCuire regime but it’s clear, that ain’t happening
We’ll continue to be capable of a victory at UNLV but destroy that optimism with a home loss to...ugh!...Montana Tech.
I’m not a homer, especially since I have not lived in Montana for eons. And I’ve long recognized that to run an intercollegiate athletic program at Montana, you have to recruit out-of-state.
I also confess to liking the days when we had a few Montana kids on the team. But have we recruited one Montana Gatorade Player of the Year during the DeCuire regime?
Brendan Howard went to Montana State, Rollie Worster to Utah State then to Utah. Brayden Koch, the 2020-21 Gatorade Player of the Year, just scored 19 against us for Montana Tech, hitting four of eight from deep. And the last two-time winner, 6’6” Rey Johnston, averages 12 points and 5 rebounds per game as a freshman for College of Idaho.
Granted, only Worster is of the caliber of a Kevin Criswell, Derek Selvig or Tres Tinkle so maybe it’s just a dearth of talent these past few decades. But I think Johnston might turn out to be pretty good.
“I’ve coached in this conference for 10 years and he’s the best player I’ve ever coached against and it’s not close,” Anaconda coach Dakota Norris said in a news release. “It’s no disrespect to those other players, but he’s that good.”
To sum up: No single thing. I wish--really wish--I could reclaim the old passion.
Yet again, our best hope is to win a Big Sky title, then come within 20 or 25 points of a #15 or #16 seed at the big Dance.
Montana basketball. It is what it is.
Ho hum.
I dunno. Wish I did.
I know I have a l-o-n-g passionate history with it.
As a little kid, my first heroes were Ray Howard and Zip Rhodes. The Griz in those days wore the striped pants that Indiana made so popular.
As a student, basketball was all the rage. You waited in line to get in. The atmosphere was insane, electric.
As an adult, living in the Bay Area, I’ve traveled over the years to Portland, Corvallis, Eugene, Reno, Stockton, San Jose, Stanford, Sacramento, Malibu, Los Angeles (both USC and UCLA) and of course across town to USF to watch “my Griz.”
I remember specific moments. Like asking Mike Montgomery early before a game if he planned to leave Montana.
“Make me an offer,” he said. (And Stanford did.)
Like Micheal Ray Richardson completely taking over a game at Pacific, while their coach yelled in vain for his kids to stop him. They couldn’t.
Or Wayne Tinkle standing pre-game in the lobby at USF, looming over a group of well-wishers and potential recruits, charming everybody.
Only two years ago, in Portland, I sneaked down during a time out to chat with Money Williams, sitting at the end of the bench with the injury that kept him out most of his freshman year. Wonderful kid. If character is destiny, he has a great future.
I like and respect Travis DeCuire for his character and his coaching ability, and know that if he left, the program would be in great hands with Chris Cobb (whose father I shared Voodoo Donuts with on a flight back from Portland.)
And yet...I dunno...when I go to egriz, I hardly check in on basketball anymore.
It’s not that I’m mad at anybody. Not raging for a change in the coaching staff or upset about the off-court behavior of the members of our team, as I was with football a few years ago. DeCuire has run a pretty clean program.
But then there’s this: Our program is in a rut, good enough to always be among the top teams in the Big Sky, but never good enough to achieve my dream of a Sweet 16—as we came very close to when Krysko was running this program.
The lack of a credible big man will continue to hurt us. Small ball is over but next year two more guards join a program that’s already loaded with guards. Our best big man during the DeCuire era was a Tinkle recruit.
The offense will continue to stall out for five to six minutes every few games, sometimes critical games, like the Big Sky championship game against the Bobcats in 2024, where we blew a six-point halftime lead and lost by 15.
I continue to pine for an offensive-minded coach such as we had in Ken Bone during the first years of the DeCuire regime but it’s clear, that ain’t happening
We’ll continue to be capable of a victory at UNLV but destroy that optimism with a home loss to...ugh!...Montana Tech.
I’m not a homer, especially since I have not lived in Montana for eons. And I’ve long recognized that to run an intercollegiate athletic program at Montana, you have to recruit out-of-state.
I also confess to liking the days when we had a few Montana kids on the team. But have we recruited one Montana Gatorade Player of the Year during the DeCuire regime?
Brendan Howard went to Montana State, Rollie Worster to Utah State then to Utah. Brayden Koch, the 2020-21 Gatorade Player of the Year, just scored 19 against us for Montana Tech, hitting four of eight from deep. And the last two-time winner, 6’6” Rey Johnston, averages 12 points and 5 rebounds per game as a freshman for College of Idaho.
Granted, only Worster is of the caliber of a Kevin Criswell, Derek Selvig or Tres Tinkle so maybe it’s just a dearth of talent these past few decades. But I think Johnston might turn out to be pretty good.
“I’ve coached in this conference for 10 years and he’s the best player I’ve ever coached against and it’s not close,” Anaconda coach Dakota Norris said in a news release. “It’s no disrespect to those other players, but he’s that good.”
To sum up: No single thing. I wish--really wish--I could reclaim the old passion.
Yet again, our best hope is to win a Big Sky title, then come within 20 or 25 points of a #15 or #16 seed at the big Dance.
Montana basketball. It is what it is.
Ho hum.
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