• 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!

LadyGriz Holsinger officially out.

R

RGRIZ57

Well-known member
With the dust settling,
Here's hoping that Coach Harris and his staff can find some defense, continue improving the offense, find some wins to end the season and the tournament. so that coach Harris, his coach's and the team stay intact. They have brought in some great players, they are very capable of some great basketball, they have some great committed players for the future. Lets Go Lady Griz
 
RGRIZ57 said:
With the dust settling,
Here's hoping that Coach Harris and his staff can find some defense, continue improving the offense, find some wins to end the season and the tournament. so that coach Harris, his coach's and the team stay intact. They have brought in some great players, they are very capable of some great basketball, they have some great committed players for the future. Lets Go Lady Griz
Click to expand...
Who was the main recruiter of these current players? If Harris and staff were, then great. If it was BH had all the connections then better rethink.
 
Art Spooner said:
Who was the main recruiter of these current players? If Harris and staff were, then great. If it was BH had all the connections then better rethink.
Click to expand...
Considering the team just started playing much better as soon as Harris took over, I would say there won't be any problem. At least with the current players. Those that have been recruited for future teams could be lost because of Holsinger leaving.

But Haslam is going to do a national search after the season, and may end up getting a totally different coach which may or may not result in some players leaving.
 
Now that Harris is the interim head coach, would he accept an assistant coach position here if they choose someone else as the head coach? That is if the new coach wanted to hire him.
Petrino spent an entire season as an interim head coach but Haslam picked Holsinger over him. This same thing can happen with Harris. Difference is that Petrino spent an entire season and Harris only a few games (around 1/3 of the season).
 
I truly believe that the current Lady Griz team is very capable of a great finish, they have played some of the better D1 teams, not D2 or D3 like in the past. played Gonzanga well, beat Washington, coaching staff in turmoil, Idaho 3rd game in 5 days , really should have beat MSU at home, NAU was shooting 71% from three, everything they thew in the air went in the net, before Payne started pulling her starters, they made 17 three's, we only shot 17, bad defense by the Lady's, Dani not on the floor. If Harris and the current staff finish strong, I hope they get a chance to see what they can do in the future. "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't".
 
In the present, it probably is a good thing that the Holsinger issue has been settled. I don't know there was a cloud, but I suspect it'll be a bit of a relief not to have to deal with that distraction anymore.

Injuries this year, like last year have the potential to alter the path. You can see Harris using all sorts of different rotations, to get better defensive effort but they really missed Dani's presence on that end last weekend.

Hard not to be impressed with the play of Waddington as a Freshmen. Harris has changed Konigs role and she too has responded well. Made the team better offensively, with the willingness to distribute the ball a bit more has freed up the offense for a bunch of different players.

Good weekend to develop some momentum.
 
Grizfan-24 said:
In the present, it probably is a good thing that the Holsinger issue has been settled. I don't know there was a cloud, but I suspect it'll be a bit of a relief not to have to deal with that distraction anymore.

Injuries this year, like last year have the potential to alter the path. You can see Harris using all sorts of different rotations, to get better defensive effort but they really missed Dani's presence on that end last weekend.

Hard not to be impressed with the play of Waddington as a Freshmen. Harris has changed Konigs role and she too has responded well. Made the team better offensively, with the willingness to distribute the ball a bit more has freed up the offense for a bunch of different players.

Good weekend to develop some momentum.
Click to expand...
Speaking of Waddington, Missoulian wrote an article on her. Only in the e-edition:

Montana guard Avery Waddington blossoming​

  • CARSON CASHION
    406 MT Sports
  • 14 hrs ago
Montana guard Avery Waddington (10) drives to the basket past Montana State forward Addison Harris (33) during a Jan. 25 game in Missoula.
BEN ALLAN SMITH, Missoulian
With a near-capacity crowd at Robin Selvig Court rallying around the Lady Griz as they sought to pull off a comeback against the Montana State Bobcats, true freshman guard Avery Waddington dribbled the ball up the court.
Just over four minutes remained in the game. By this time on Jan. 25, Waddington had tallied nine points in the fourth quarter alone. The 6-foot-3 guard raced alongside her defender at the halfcourt line, senior Cat standout Esmeralda Morales, before slowing down at the three-point arc. The sudden change of direction left Morales stumbling into the paint, leaving Waddington wide open.
The freshman fired off a 3-pointer that brought Montana within one. "That was such a fun experience," Waddington told 406 MT Sports of the moment. "For it to be my first (Brawl) and for me to play like that, it was awesome."
Waddington wasn't done. Two minutes later, her team still down by one, she found herself in the left corner as junior guard Mack Konig drove into the paint. When Waddington's defender collapsed to defend the drive, Konig dished the rock back out to the freshman for a wide-open 3-pointer that gave Montana a two-point lead. The fans gazing down on the floor, now on their feet after the latest bucket, were watching an instant-classic performance from a Lady Griz on pace to be next in a line of greats.
The performance, 15 fourth-quarter points, was enough to earn the right to take the final shot of the game. A Morales free throw gave Montana State a one-point lead with 4.6 seconds on the clock.
UM had one play to secure a massive upset win in the biggest home game of the season, and the team looked to Waddington in just her 19th career game.
"To take the final shot for the CatGriz game as a freshman, (it's a) huge honor, huge responsibility," senior forward Dani Bartsch said. "I can't even imagine the pressure."
Konig set into motion the final inbounds play from the paint, darting up to meet a potential pass, bringing her defender with her, The move left Waddington one-on-one in the paint. Waddington fooled her defender with a shifty misdirection move and was immediately wide open at the rim.
Waddington leaped to catch the inbound pass from Bartsch, returned to the court, shifted her balance and put up a shot. It was just short, bouncing off the rim and ending the game.
Though not the ending Waddington and the Lady Griz hoped for, the fullgame performance produced some of the loudest cheers all season and helped Montana play some of its best basketball of the season.
"I was really disappointed, really sad," Waddington recalled.
"I wanted to win bad. "I'm not letting it bring me down, because I know what type of player I am." The Coeur d'Alene native has started every game since that showing. Her emergence and development has been one of the most positive storylines around Montana basketball in February.
"I know that I'm a good player," Waddington said. "I know it's gonna be hard, not every day is gonna be perfect. I have confidence in myself, I know my teammates and coaches have confidence in me."
The newcomer wasn't gifted any sort of honeymoon phase after graduating from Lake City High — Waddington graduated June 8 and was in Missoula June 10. Montana interim coach Nate Harris said, in his trips across the border throughout Waddington's recruiting process, it became clear she was, "a unique talent." Her height and length, combined with her assembled skillset with the ball in her hands, left her without many weaknesses.
Harris said she popped in the summer before her senior year, and the results speak for themselves: McDonalds All-American selection, 1,000-point scorer at Lake City, 19 Division I offers entering college.
Her game-ready skillset, as well as height only topped by Izabella Zingaro and Imogen Greenslade on the UM roster, might've helped make the transition from preps to DI ball easier.
"She didn't have any of the awkward onboarding process," Harris said. From her teammate's perspective, Bartsch recalls being impressed by her pure athleticism. "She can shoot, she can drive," Bartsch said.
"There's some games where she'll just dribble between three people and I'm like, 'What the hell? How are you doing that?'" Waddington recalls feeling comfortable in her initial practices with the Lady Griz, fitting in easily while fostering a hunger to get better.
The nerve-racking anxiety many would feel in taking such a leap of competition wasn't ever on Waddington's mind. All she wanted to do, she said, was, "get after it."
That changed, though, when the team competed in its first scrimmage of the fall against Utah Valley. A turnover while driving to the basket was a sobering moment.
"That's kind of when I was like 'Oh gosh,'" Waddington said. "It's just way faster paced. I learned from that scrimmage how hard you have to play, but from there I just progressed."
The experience showed Waddington she needed to see the floor better, attack the basket with more aggression, speed up her jump shot. "You get on the floor, you understand that the game moves faster, that people are more athletic, that there's more good players, that your margin for error is so much smaller," Harris said.
"You just have to be so consistent and so locked in. I just think she's become better on a consistent day to day basis."
A few months later, the Idahoan played in her first official game in the maroon and silver in Spokane against Gonzaga. The game was a homecoming of sorts for Waddington; Spokane sits less than 40 miles from Coeur d'Alene.
Friends and family were able to come watch her debut, and the freshman made the hour-drive worth their while. Leading the team in points (13), rebounds (five) and steals (three), all off the bench, was an immediate sign that Waddington was ready to play and ready to contribute to winning basketball.
Bartsch, who also played minutes for Montana as a freshman — though she notes "Even my experience is only a fraction of what she is (doing) — has the unique ability to empathize with Waddington. Referring to the freshman as "a mini-me," Bartsch understands the pressure of playing as a freshman and the try-not-to-messup mentality that can harm athlete's confidence.
"It's hard because your leash is small," Bartsch added. "You haven't built a relationship necessarily, like a senior can with coaches." With play time at a premium (Waddington didn't enter the starting five until the non-conference finale Dec. 20), the freshman made the most of her time on the court by doing the dirty work and staying efficient with her shot selection.
Through nonconference play, Waddington led the team in both steals and rebounds. Simultaneously, she shot 37.5% from three-point range and 47.8% from the field.
Like in the Gonzaga game, she received the most minutes of any reserve most nights. "You just got to control what you can control," Waddington said of the early stages of her season. "That was just hustle, having heart and doing what I can defensively and the offense will flow."
Waddington recorded double-digit scoring in her opening weekend of Big-Sky play, tallying 12 and 15 against Eastern Washington and Idaho, respectively. After that, however, she reached 10 just once in the next five games including three games with five-or-less points.
Bartsch said a more focused approach to scouting from opponents can stifle freshmen in Waddington's shoes. The competition she faced just a month earlier had no idea what to expect from her, but now teams knew her tendencies, what moves she liked to get to, what direction she preferred to go with the ball.
"Everything becomes harder, and you've never had to deal with that in high school," Bartsch added. "Trying to work through that while not losing confidence is huge." The next game after her mini-slump was against Montana State.
Waddington, back in the starting five again, delivered in the most awe-striking sense possible. "She's starting to take off now," Harris said. "She's seen a lot more situations, and so now it's like, 'Okay, I've seen this before. I've done this before.'"
Harris said the freshman's development and rise has helped solve some rotational issues in the front court.
With Waddington starting, he's able to deploy Izzy Zingaro for periods that have led to more success for her, too. The versatility that Waddington's combination of length and speed provide is an immediate plug-and-play defensive boost for Montana.
"You play so many teams in this league where it's four-out with a big who still will shoot threes, or it's even into five-out stuff," Harris said. "We needed to be able to guard those teams successfully, and Avery's a big part of that."
In a period of life where perspective-altering change comes on a monthly basis, Waddington has weathered the storm of her freshman year and turned it into a blossoming start to her Montana career.
"I've gained a lot of IQ," Waddington said. "I'm getting stronger, I'm playing smarter."
And — it's only February
Click to expand...
 
IdahoGrizFan said:
I guess it really doesn’t matter what happened, it’s just time to move on. I would think there are some good women basketball coaches out there who would love to coach at Montana. Joslyn Tinkle? Someone the players would want to play for.
Click to expand...
JT seems like an ideal head LG coach, talk about player experience, some coaching experience to include this team and family and community heritage to boot! But would JT really be a good fit?? (no idea we could even attract/afford her).
 
RGRIZ57 said:
I truly believe that the current Lady Griz team is very capable of a great finish, they have played some of the better D1 teams, not D2 or D3 like in the past. played Gonzanga well, beat Washington, coaching staff in turmoil, Idaho 3rd game in 5 days , really should have beat MSU at home, NAU was shooting 71% from three, everything they thew in the air went in the net, before Payne started pulling her starters, they made 17 three's, we only shot 17, bad defense by the Lady's, Dani not on the floor. If Harris and the current staff finish strong, I hope they get a chance to see what they can do in the future. "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't".
Click to expand...
As I have noticed, when we put it all together...we are a complete terror for our opponents, i.e fundamentals, D solid bench support...all the above. When we are inconsistent on D, shoot airballs, miss lay ups...yikes. TMC when she is on, is core to our success, I am perplexed when her game is off!!
 
Here's what I noticed looking into some stats. This year's team and last years are not the same. BH didn't do great recruiting for this year. How many players did you lose off last year's team to this year's? How many players averaged in double figures last year vs this year? 3 last year. 1 this year and Mack is barely into double figures at that. If your wondering Tyler averages 9.1. Was anyone ready to fire BH over how the team started this year? So I guess to expect Nate to do amazing things with the same team is unfair. I think he should get a shake at head coach.
 
My view is that any fan who supported BH's hiring out to be fired now. He was weak and bad-news from the get-go, according to one ill-informed LG fan. Ha.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top