With regard to your comment about Sonya Rogers:
Robin Selvig is in his 28th season as coach of the Lady Griz and his 33rd year of affiliation with the University of Montana overall. A three-year letterwinner for the Grizzly men's basketball team in the early 70s, Selvig was named UM's women's coach June 6, 1978.
The Lady Griz enjoyed another banner year in 2004-05, something that has become commonplace for the program under Selvig's long-time guidance. Last year Montana went 22-8, its 25th winning season in the last 27 years and its 23rd 20-win season over that stretch.
The Lady Griz won their 19th conference championship, going 13-1 in league play, then hosting and winning the Big Sky Conference tournament. UM advanced to its 16th NCAA tournament, earning a No. 12 seed. In a first-round game of the Kansas City Regional, Montana fell to No. 5 seed Vanderbilt, 67-44.
Selvig earned his 16th conference coach of the year award in the process.
Hollie Tyler became Selvig's 10th Big Sky Conference MVP in 2004-05 and Lynsey Monaco became Montana?s third straight honoree of the league's defensive player of the year award.
Success came quickly for the Lady Griz program under Selvig's guidance and has continued with few interruptions for 27 years. That success has placed his name among the woman's game's most recognized figures in coaching today ? Auriemma, Summitt, VanDerveer ? but to be mentioned with Kentucky's Adolph Rupp, UCLA's John Wooden and Kansas's Phog Allen, some of the most hallowed names in NCAA basketball history'
When Montana defeated Portland State last March 6, Selvig reached 600 career wins, doing so in just 772 games. That made the Lady Griz coach the sixth-fastest coach in NCAA history to reach No. 600, in all NCAA divisions, men's or women's, trailing the likes of Rupp (704), Summitt (734) and Wooden (755), but reaching the milestone faster than North Carolina's Dean Smith (773) and KU?s Allen (780).
With a record of 624 wins and just 181 losses, a winning percentage of .775, in the last quarter-plus century of coaching at Montana, Selvig ranks sixth on the list of winningest active Division I women's basketball coaches, placing his name among his peers Pat Summitt of Tennessee (.837), Geno Auriemma of Connecticut (.834) and Tara VanDerveer of Stanford (.787).
Selvig has directed his alma mater to 20 national tournament appearances ? 16 of those being the NCAA tournament ? 19 conference championships and 16 postseason conference championships. Twenty-five of Selvig's 27 years have been winning seasons and 23 times the Lady Griz have reached 20 victories.
The winningest coach in Big Sky Conference history, Selvig has coached one All-American, 10 conference most valuable players, 70 all-conference players and 87 academic all-conference players.
Selvig's quarter-plus century of success has been impressive in its consistency and has been done with similar methods year after year: defense, turning great crowd support into a dominating home-court advantage and remarkable league performance.
Seven different Montana teams have led the nation in a defensive category. The trend started early in Selvig's career, when his fourth team, 1981-82, led the country in points allowed (53.3 ppg). Four more times the Lady Griz led the nation in scoring defense. Twice they have ranked first in field goal percentage defense.
Prior to Selvig's first year, Montana women's basketball games were attended by an average of fewer than 200 fans. The support the Lady Griz enjoy today (Montana's average home attendance of 3,786 ranked 29th in the nation last year) did not happen overnight, but rather was a gradual process.
By 1982-83 UM had cracked the 1,000 mark for average attendance (1,180). Just five years later, 1987-88, the average had jumped to 3,119 fans per game, which ranked sixth in the nation, and the fans have continued coming to Dahlberg Arena.
Montana averaged a program-high 5,235 fans per game in 1994-95.
The Lady Griz have won 90 percent of their home games under Selvig, going 370-41 (.900).
Montana's success in league play (first the Northwest Women's Basketball league, then the Mountain West Conference, now the Big Sky Conference) under Selvig, on the other hand, was far from gradual. He took a team that went 4-19 in league play in '77 and '78 and turned it into a second-place finisher with his first team in 1978-79.
Selvig's first 20 teams would finish either first or second in their respective conferences. To date Selvig's teams have gone 331-57 in league play, a .853 winning percentage. Perhaps more impressive than the Lady Griz' 179-16 (.918) record at home in those games is their 152-41 road record, a .788 winning percentage.
While Selvig is entering his 28th season on the women's basketball sideline, his association with the university goes back to the fall of 1970, when the Outlook, Mont., native matriculated at UM as a student-athlete himself. Selvig was a four-year member of the Grizzly basketball team, earning second team All-Big Sky honors as a senior. In his final year of competition he was also presented the John Eaheart Award as the team's top defensive player and the Grizzly Cup, given to UM's best all-around athlete, scholar and person.
Selvig graduated in the spring of 1974 with a degree in health and physical education and was inducted into the Grizzly Basketball Hall of Fame in February 1983.
After coaching the Montana men's freshman team to a 10-8 record in 1974-75, Selvig took over the girls' basketball program at Plentywood (Mont.) High School, where he totaled a 38-24 record over three seasons.
Selvig was hired by UM athletic director Harley Lewis as Montana's fourth women's basketball coach on June 6, 1978, taking over a team that had gone 7-13 the previous season.
Selvig's first Montana team finished 13-13 and in second place in the NWBL Mountain Division and in a sign of things to come led the league in scoring defense.
Montana's modest improvement to .500 in Selvig's first year blossomed into a stretch of success that rivals any team?s in the country.
After going 19-10 in 1979-80, Montana went 22-8 in 1980-81, winning the program's first league title. Those years started a string of 19 consecutive winning seasons and 18 straight 20-win seasons.
Montana made its first of 20 national tournament appearances in 1981-82, losing a tight 57-52 decision to Wayland Baptist in the opening round of the AIAW national tournament.
After coaching Montana in the NWBL for four seasons, Selvig and the Lady Griz moved to the Mountain West Conference in 1982-83. Montana dominated that league for six seasons, going 78-6, winning five regular-season league titles and four postseason conference championships and earning four NCAA tournament trips.
In 1982-83 Montana made its first trip to the NCAA national tournament, losing at Louisiana-Monroe, 72-53.
In 1983-84 a breakthrough for the program came when the Lady Griz won their first-ever NCAA tournament game, a 56-47 home-court victory over Oregon State.
Starting with the 1987-88 team, Selvig would take Montana to the NCAA tournament 10 of the next 11 seasons.
When the Lady Griz began Big Sky Conference play in 1988-89, the success they had in the NWBL and MWC did not stop. Montana won the first three Big Sky Conference titles with perfect 16-0 marks and has gone 220-36 in league play overall, winning 11 more conference titles.
In February 2001 Selvig was inducted into the Grizzly Sports Hall of Fame.
Selvig has been recognized often for his coaching. He won his first conference coach of the year honor after the 1981-82 season when the NWBL gave Selvig his first honor. Fifteen more league honors followed, with five Mountain West Athletic Conference and 10 Big Sky Conference coach of the year awards. Selvig has also been named the Women's Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) District VII Coach of the Year nine times.
Following the 1990-91 season, Selvig was one of three finalists for national coach of the year honors.
An influential member of the Missoula community, Selvig has served as the director of the Montana Special Olympics and as a spokesman for Missoula Youth Homes.
