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LadyGriz Lady Griz: Time to Cut the Montana Ties

The point is not to recruit 5 Montana kids every year. It’s to recruit 1-2 every year and have 3-4 on the roster from a variety of classes.

Also, I agree, very many Montana kids are not D1 ready right away. But those kids have a better chance of being willing to redshirt and could develop. At the low major level - and don’t kid yourself, the Big Sky is low major - you are turning over 50-75 percent of your roster every single year. Why not mitigate that by having the middle to bottom third of your roster dedicated to local kids who could be really good 5th starters or solid bench guys by their 4th or fifth years in the program? Empower them to stay. Then you can spend SO MUCH more of your recruiting resources getting Money Williams and Martin Breunig and Michael Oguine and Ahmaad Rorie…

One other question I have: for all of Montana basketball’s modern history, they’ve had great players from Montana. Every single NCAA Tournament team ever, except last year, had solid Montana guys. DeCuire has had some good Montana players - Kendal Manuel, Jared Samuelson - but they had to start their careers elsewhere.

Raequan Evans is from Billings and a Griz legacy kid. After a detour through JC, he started in the Elite 8 for Florida State.

So here’s my question. How has there been solid to great Montana talent - from Larry Krystkowiak to Roger Fasting to Darrell Engellant to all the great Montanans who played for Blaine Taylor like Spoja and Kirk Walker and Jr Camel and Shawn Samuelson to guys like Kevin Criswell, Jordan Hasquet, Jack McGillis who won an NCAA Tournament game to Manuel and Samuelson- on all the best Montana teams….but there’s this steadfast perception that there’s no D1 talent in Montana AND that it’s getting less recruitable and the talent is getting worse. How can that be?

How are athletes across the board in basically every sport everywhere, and particularly in Montana - look at the Power 4 girls track athletes this state is pumping out right now - getting better and boys’ basketball is getting worse? Could it be that it’s just way easier to recruit huge metro areas now so the perception that Montana is not good enough is created as a side effect? Honest question. Don’t understand how boys basketball is getting way worse while everything else is getting better…

Also, D1 coaches, and not just Montana, need to get over the prototype. Luka Doncic is one of the greatest players the game has ever seen and he’s not more athletic than anyone. Jokic is huge … but can’t jump over three sheets of paper. They are WAY more skilled tho. Better spacial awareness, vision, IQ, predictively ability, artistry.

Can Rey Johnston from Loyola out jump most anyone? Nope. But he’s 6-6, can shoot from 30 feet, is one of the best passing bigs I’ve seen in the last 25 years in Montana, went undefeated for three years in a row winning games by an average of 40 points, starred on the club circuit, just won Frontier Player of the Week as a true freshman….you’d telling me you’d rather have some 6-5 slap dick from Oakland who can’t shoot a lick, can’t pass, but can run and jump and commit fouls who will average 4 points, 3 rebounds a game, not like his limited role, vaguely fit into Missoula, and transfer after a year instead of seeing what Johnston could become after 5 years of D1 practice and training? Cmon…
 
Colter_Nuanez56 said:
There are so many high-level girls in Montana right now coming out of high school. Avory DeCoite and Camryn Reinker would each be among the best players on the Lady Griz RIGHT NOW. DeCoite would be their best defender by a country mile and she's a senior in high school.

EWU had three girls from Montana and a 4th, all-state Gallatin power guard, Jada Davis, coming in.

Boise State has three Montana girls on its roster once they add Mason Quinn from Frenchtown, who the Lady Griz thought they were going to get.

Paige Lofing from Huntley plays at Gonzaga.

Tricia Binford's team features Taylee Chirrick (Roberts/Billings), Teagan Erickson (Saco), Brooke Berry (Billings), Kadynce Couture (Missoula) with Baker's Madison O'Connor incoming.

The Gunlock sisters at Bigfork are D-1 quality. One is at BYU.

Ave Odegaard from Gallatin is going to Saint Mary's.

The Laird sisters at Loyola will be able to go wherever they want by the time their careers are done.

Cadence Graham from Butte is a D-1 quality shooter. Marissa Snyder from Ennis is as well, although I think she's going to the Frontier.

Kennedy Moore from Flathead plays at Wake Forest.

Sydney Pierce from Billings West plays volleyball for the Lady Griz but could certainly play hoops.

Paige Wasson, who was teammates with Erickson at North County when they went undefeated for 3 straight years, is playing at Rocky but I thought she was Big Sky quality.

This is just off the top of my head. You can only recruit 2-4 high school girls per class. If there are 15-20 in the state in a given year, you only need to get 20-25 percent of them.

If you say "this is skewed because bigger programs are recruiting Montana now that it's 2025", that's false. Karen Deden and Loree Payne went to Washington 30+ years ago. Kirsten Tilleman went to Oregon State. Joselyn Tinkle went to Stanford and her sisster went to Gonazaga.

The difference is that the Lady Griz used to not let the small-town girls go anywhere but Montana (Payne being one of the exceptions) and they used to recruit all fo them hard even if they had big offers. Shannon Cate had Pac 10 and SEC offers and they still got her.

A great majority of the young ladies listed above were not recruited all that hard by Montana. Kadynce Couture commited to Idaho and then signed at Montana State despite being from Missoula. That's one example of many misses.
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Besides football, problem is AD & athletic department don’t put much credit into women WBB or women soccer. WBB hired an inexperienced coach on the cheap with limited recruiting network, they let winningest soccer leave because they couldn’t invest in the program over an 8 year period. Now they can’t hire a coach due to lack of funds, there too candidates turned them down.
 
5280Griz said:
I missed him because on 247 it lists the prep school in Utah as his high school.
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Fischer Brown left Lewistown for the prep school his senior year. Fun fact(s) His father (Justin) played basketball for the Cats, and his grandfather (Steve) played for the Griz.
 
HelenaHandBasket said:
They could be the best team in the Frontier.
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Youre so dense. Have the Montana guys on roster and keep building that culture, and increases retention and minimize roster turnover. AND allows the staff to be more precise in using their resources to go get rhe out of state talent.
 
nicktaber58 said:
... except they've beat the griz 2 times in the last 6 years. I was at the game. They belonged athletically, skill ect. Would tech hold up in the Big sky grind? No. But having Montana guys mixed in with the pridgens, moneys etc, they damn sure would.
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And I stand by if they scheduled 10 games with the same roster, all the same players, Griz would win 9.
 
nicktaber58 said:
Youre so dense. Have the Montana guys on roster and keep building that culture, and increases retention and minimize roster turnover. AND allows the staff to be more precise in using their resources to go get rhe out of state talent.
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And your a fool. Could the Griz compete with a couple, sure, but they would be middle of the pack with a third of the roster made up of Montana kids.
 
citygriz said:
Fair enough. I did not know that. I heard that was the same reason Krysko left, that his wife did not like Missoula.

I am knocked out by the abundance of women's basketball talent that Montana has turned out over the years. The list of players mentioned in this thread is staggering. And I think we forgot Mandy Morales.
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It would surprise me that LK left because his wife didn't like Missoula, but I don't know. The family comes back every summer to Flathead. I know Flathead isn't Missoula.
 
HelenaHandBasket said:
And your a fool. Could the Griz compete with a couple, sure, but they would be middle of the pack with a third of the roster made up of Montana kids.
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There is no evidence that suggests youre point. Travis decuire himself played on 2 big sky championship teams with a handful of out of state guys, and a majority of Montana kids. You don't have evidence, youre just regurgitating an unproven lie that has set in on the team.
 
mthoopsfan said:
It would surprise me that LK left because his wife didn't like Missoula, but I don't know. The family comes back every summer to Flathead. I know Flathead isn't Missoula.
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Krysko left Montana because he took an NBA assistant job that shortly became an NBA HEAD COACHING job. A meteoric coaching rise. Nothing to do with not liking missoula.
 
nicktaber58 said:
There is no evidence that suggests youre point. Travis decuire himself played on 2 big sky championship teams with a handful of out of state guys, and a majority of Montana kids. You don't have evidence, youre just regurgitating an unproven lie that has set in on the team.
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There is no evidence that suggest your point. More than likely TD recruits a Montana kid every year, they don't get much run, and transfer to Tech with a chip on his shoulder for the one game against Montana every 3 years.
 
HelenaHandBasket said:
There is no evidence that suggest your point. More than likely TD recruits a Montana kid every year, they don't get much run, and transfer to Tech with a chip on his shoulder for the one game against Montana every 3 years.
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😂 there is ... absolute evidence. No evidence of your hypothetical claims having any truth though. You lose. Again! Arghhhh.
 
nicktaber58 said:
I cant help you if you refuse to acknowledge that tech has won in missoula twice in the last 6 years, which refutes your claim of tech only winning 1 in 10. Evidence vs hypo. Its better than science. Proven.
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If you really think that Tech is better than the Griz, to the extent that they would win 6 of every 10 games, then TD should be gone and they should quit playing basketball in the BSC. I guess the Griz would beat UNLV 6 out of 10 also...
 
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