• Hi Guest, want to participate in the discussions, keep track of read/unread posts access private forums and more? Create your free account and increase the benefits of your eGriz.com experience today!

MBBALL 25-26 Griz Basketball Schedule Tracker

Griz til I die said:
Update 8/4
The conference schedule is out: See below
1/1 vs. Northern Arizona
1/3 vs. Northern Colorado
1/8 @ Idaho
1/10 @ Eastern Washington
1/17 @ Montana State
1/19 @ Northern Arizona
1/22 vs. Weber State
1/24 vs. Idaho State
1/29 @ Portland State
1/31 @ Sacramento State
2/5 vs. Eastern Washington
2/7 vs. Idaho
2/14 vs. Montana State
2/19 @ Idaho State
2/21 @ Weber State
2/26 vs. Sacramento State
2/28 vs. Portland State
3/2 @ Northern Colorado

A few takeaways:
-It's a road heavy first half of conference play which includes 4 games on the road between 1/8-1/19.
-This season the NAU-UNC road trip is split. This is traditionally the toughest road trip travel wise in the conference. Not a huge fan of hustling down to NAU the Monday after the Brawl in Bozeman. That's tough travel on short notice and could potentially be a trap game. Luckily I think NAU is gonna really struggle this year. At UNC to close the regular season would've been one hell of a game last year. We'll see about this year.
-The second half of the league slate is much more home friendly. Between 2/1-2/14 The Griz will not play a road game and will get 2 weeks at home which will be really nice.
-It appears that both of the Brawl games are one week earlier this year than they were last year. Typically the games have been the last weeks of January and February. The first game will be in Bozeman on 1/17 and the second will be in Missoula on Valentines Day 2/14. These should be really good games on both the men's and women's side.

Overall I don't have too many gripes about the schedule. It seems reasonably fair. Should be an interesting conference race!

A reminder of non-conference too!
11/14 vs. Northern Iowa
12/3 vs. North Dakota State
12/6 @ North Dakota
TBD @ Stanford
TBD @ Louisville
TBD vs. Cal Poly
Click to expand...
https://twitter.com/x/status/1952429551365013928
https://twitter.com/x/status/1952429541491634433
 
https://twitter.com/x/status/1952556907497226288
A good day of scheduling news! We get both of our MTE opponents uncovered today! Only a 3 team MTE this year. Most years I’d be a little upset about that but considering we already have three other D1 home opponents this year I’m fine with that. Games will be played from November 23 (day after Griz-cat Football) through November 25.

The Oakland Golden Grizzlies (yes, that’s their name) are led by legendary 30 year head coach Greg Kampe. They’re most well known for their NCAA tournament win in 2023 defeating Kentucky and ending John Calipari’s time in Lexington. Outside of that they’ve been pretty average to below average for most of Kampe’s time. This past season they were a measly 16-18 overall and 11-9 in Horizon League play and lost in the semis to Robert Morris at the HL tourney.

The Lamar Cardinals are led by fifth year head coach Alvin Brooks and are actually coming off their most impressive season of the 21st century finishing 20-13 overall and 14-6 in Southland Conference play. They made it all the way to the championship game before losing to McNeese who ended up defeating Clemson in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Idk much about the state of the Southland this upcoming season but I have to think that Lamar will be one of the favorites to win it.

Here’s the full MTE schedule:
November 23 Lamar vs. Montana
November 24 Oakland vs. Lamar
November 25 Oakland vs. Montana

And our updated non-conference schedule:
November 14 vs. Northern Iowa
November 23 vs. Lamar
November 25 vs. Oakland
December 3 vs. North Dakota State
December 6 @ North Dakota
TBD @ Stanford
TBD @ Louisville
TBD vs. Cal Poly

8 games down, 5 to go!
 
Update 8/7
We've got dates for our two money games! The Griz will face Stanford on Saturday November 8. Hopefully this game is at night so we can all run home from the Football game against Eastern in time to watch this game as I like our chances.

We will face Louisville on Saturday December 20. This lines up with the FCS Semifinals so if everything goes great for Griz Football, there's a chance we may not see this game unless it's also played at night. So fingers crossed for that.

Updated non-conference schedule:
November 8 @ Stanford
November 14 vs. Northern Iowa
November 23 vs. Lamar
November 25 vs. Oakland
December 3 vs. North Dakota State
December 6 @ North Dakota
December 20 @ Louisville
TBD vs. Cal Poly

P.S. the Lady Griz are hosting BYU in Missoula this year on Wednesday November 19 and hosting Utah in Missoula on Saturday November 29. They also play at Oregon on Saturday November 8. Looking like a pretty tough slate for the ladies so far.
 
Last edited:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1956460287839683059
Holy crap Nate Harris. We’d all have an aneurism if DeCuire put together a schedule like this.

Still working to track down the remaining opponents for the Men. I’m thinking Northwest Indian College on opening night, and right now I’m thinking Carroll might be our other non D1. Likely one Mountain West team out there but those guys are slow posting their schedules. Beyond that I have no idea what the other two games would feature. Unless there home and homes that start us on the road, I couldn’t even wager a guess as to who they could be against. I’ll keep looking but I think we’re probably pretty close to a release of the schedule. Maybe as early as Monday!
 
Last edited:
Griz til I die said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1956460287839683059
Holy crap Nate Harris. We’d all have an aneurism if DeCuire put together a schedule like this.

Still working to track down the remaining opponents for the Men. I’m thinking Northwest Indian College on opening night, and right now I’m thinking Carroll might be our other non D1. Likely one Mountain West team out there but those guys are slow posting their schedules. Beyond that I have no idea what the other two games would feature. Unless there home and homes that start us on the road, I couldn’t even wager a guess as to who they could be against. I’ll keep looking but I think we’re probably pretty close to a release of the schedule. Maybe as early as Monday!
Click to expand...
That's what I'm talking about! Get rid of the Frontier Conference games, finally. It's not like we need to play a state championship like back in the early days of women's hoops. We're a D-I program that hasn't been acting like it.
I remember when the men played the opener against Simon Fraser and didn't even prepare for them and that was their one warm up for the rest of the season.
I might have to hit the road and go to Houston and/or ACU.
Oh, and Tarleton in Abilene! Nice, I can get some Lady Griz on.
 
Couple of updates here before Football starts to get rolling this week. There are still 5 games out there that need to be uncovered. Here's my current thought process:

-Of these five, I'm expecting at least two of these to be non D1 games. Right now, I'm thinking the two we might see are Northwest Indian College and Carroll. If NWIC does appear on the schedule, then I am expecting them to be the season open on either Monday the 3rd or Tuesday the 4th as NWIC plays in Bozeman on the 5th. Carroll is the only current MT NAIA team that has not announced their nonconference schedule. If Carroll shows up, I think it will likely be late November. I'll keep an eye on them.

-I'm still expecting at least one Mountain West team on the schedule. Right now my educated guess is UNLV. The Rebels at this moment only have two home games on their nonconference schedule. They have three holes still to fill and I'm expecting all three to be home games. If we see UNLV I would say this game would get paired with the Stanford game for a two game road trip. So I'd guess 11/10 or 11/11 for this game. The other team I'm gonna watch carefully is San Jose State. The Spartans still have four holes to fill and they currently have zero home games scheduled in November. SJSU would make sense since we will be in the area playing Stanford. I would pencil that in for the same dates for UNLV. I think it will be one or another.

-After these three, that's still gonna leave two openings on our schedule. I'm really not sure who else we might see. I suspect these remaining two games will likely be road games. We have a track record of scheduling at least one WCC team every year but the only one that still has considerable holes to fill is Seattle U. Maybe that's a possibility? I'm really not sure. Most of the WCC has their schedules finalized or need to still fill one game. It'd be hard for me to venture a guess.

That's all I got for now. I'm hoping we get some news this week as more teams release their schedules. I'll be on the lookout.

Updated non-conference schedule:
November 8 @ Stanford
November 14 vs. Northern Iowa
November 23 vs. Lamar
November 25 vs. Oakland
December 3 vs. North Dakota State
December 6 @ North Dakota
December 20 @ Louisville
TBD vs. Cal Poly
 
WyomingGrizFan said:
Why can't we get a game (home / away) with Wyoming?

We play high school all-star games with them, don't we?
Click to expand...
A quick check on the team rosters, Montana has one in state player on the current roster. Wyoming has none. Other than that, we did play them home and home in 2016/17 season.
Maybe you can enlighten us more on what the attraction is in this further.
The fact that they are in Laramie doesn't exactly make it feel like it is a game between neighboring states when Washington State, Gonzaga, Washington and Portland even are closer.
 
Griz in Texas said:
A quick check on the team rosters, Montana has one in state player on the current roster. Wyoming has none. Other than that, we did play them home and home in 2016/17 season.
Maybe you can enlighten us more on what the attraction is in this further.
The fact that they are in Laramie doesn't exactly make it feel like it is a game between neighboring states when Washington State, Gonzaga, Washington and Portland even are closer.
Click to expand...
Yeah, them too.
 
Update 8/29

I realize today is 9/2 but this was my update from Friday that I meant to post and it got stuck in the drafts. Per Alex Rosinski, the Griz will play at UNLV on Tuesday November 11 and play at Texas A&M on Tuesday November 18. I hit the nail on the head with UNLV and got that matchup and date exactly right, but I did not have the Aggies anywhere on my radar. Both squads are gonna be led by new head coaches.

The Rebels are led by first year head coach Josh Pastner. He's spent the last couple seasons working in the ESPN College Basketball studios but prior to that was the head coach at Georgia Tech and really struggled during most of his tenure besides the 21 covid season when he won the ACC Tournament and played in the NCAA Tournament during that bubble year. UNLV over the last decade has largely been very mediocre. Last year they were 18-15 overall and 11-9 in Mountain West play. This year it looks like they're going to have a brand new team as they've brought in 9 transfers with a couple of notable names (Naas Cunningham from Alabama)(Kimani Hamilton from High Point). Hard to say what our chances are against these guys with so many new faces, but I like that we're facing a different Mountain West team for once. Also important to point out that Brooklyn Hicks is joining us from UNLV, so if there's any holdovers from last years team, he may be able to provide some insights.

The Aggies are led by first year head coach Bucky McMillan who comes over from Samford where he had a pretty successful stint at. He takes over an A&M team that went 23-11 overall and 11-7 in SEC play last season and advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament before losing to Michigan. This was all under former coach Buzz Williams who left to take the head coaching job at Maryland. It looks to me like McMillan opted to retain a lot of last years team and did not really utilize the portal much except for one noticeable addition in Federiko Federiko the big man from Texas Tech who was very good last season for the Red Raiders. He will be a handful for this team. It's always tough going up against an SEC team especially when they have a lot of size, but hell at least it's not Tennessee this year lol. The Griz have faced the Aggies once under DeCuire and it was all the way back in his first season in the NIT.

This leaves 3 holes to fill. Two of those will be non D1's at home (current guess is NWIC and Carroll) and then I'd guess one final road game. Unsure who that could be though. We should be getting an announcement anytime soon though.

Updated non-conference schedule:
11/8 @ Stanford
11/11 @ UNLV
11/14 vs. Northern Iowa
11/18 @ Texas A&M
11/23 vs. Lamar
11/25 vs. Oakland
12/3 vs. North Dakota State
12/6 @ North Dakota
12/20 @ Louisville
TBD vs. Cal Poly
 
Last edited:
WyomingGrizFan said:
Why can't we get a game (home / away) with Wyoming?

We play high school all-star games with them, don't we?
Click to expand...
MSU used to play Wyoming every or almost every year during the Mick Durham era in the late 90's , early 2000's at The Metra, which sits about 10,000 here in Billings and promoted it as " The Border War."

Since Billings is the big city for Northern Wyoming--the Wyomingites come shopping ( Costco, Target, Sam's Club, Home Depit, Lowe's, Best Buy, etc. ) and doctoring up here if their local doc's can't fix them, plus they fly out of and into BIL ( Gillette, Sheridan, Buffalo, Story, Lovell, Frannie, Powell, Thermopolis, Cody, etc.,) we had as many Cowboy fans as Bobcats at that game. Since MSU routinely got their a$$ kicked, I changed the name of the rivalry to " The Border Beating," and then when the fricking Shi__y Kitties 😸 replayed the last few minutes of The 2002 ( football ) Brawl because they hadn't beat us since 1985, I quit going in disgust and shortly after, the game died a merciful death.

Mick Durham, 20 years later, ironically retired from MSU--MSUB as HC. We tell our Shi__y Kitty 😺 friends in Bozeman that the " B " in MSUB stands for best, as in " MSU Best ! "

The boys and girls all-star high school basketball games-- Wyoming v. Montana, are played up here in June in Billings @ Rocky Mountain College and either Sheridan CC or Gilette CC typically hosts the Wyoming games.
 
Just saw a post on the OOC schedule with some "guest reporters" spilling the scoop. I am a moron and can't put said link here. Interesting some of them...
 
WTF is this 😂 Northwest Indian College, Ottawa, Montana Tech. Oh and can’t forget the powerhouse that is Salish Kootenai College. Come on man
 
GrizWin99 said:
Schedule released. Go Griz!
https://twitter.com/x/status/1970622556701925703
gogriz.com

Montana finalizes 2025-26 men's basketball schedule - University of Montana Athletics

It's always tough to schedule as the University of Montana. It's even more difficult when you are coming off a 25-win, Big Sky Championship season that concl...
gogriz.com gogriz.com
Click to expand...
I think a combination of our history and the conference we are in. I bet if you talk one on one with Weber, they, would tell you the same. Idaho State was there once and so was Idaho, but that's why the larger conferences treat us that way for the most part.
 
Griz in Texas said:
I think a combination of our history and the conference we are in. I bet if you talk one on one with Weber, they, would tell you the same. Idaho State was there once and so was Idaho, but that's why the larger conferences treat us that way for the most part.
Click to expand...
It’s gonna be a good thing when we go back to 20 conference games next year. One less non-conference game we’ll have to schedule. That can make all the difference in the world.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top