. . . Montana players came to the court for their final warmup against Weber State in Friday's Big Sky tournament semifinal game, several — yelling as to be heard over the crowd — said to each other "it feels like a home game."
Indeed, Griz fans outnumbered WSU fans at least 10 to 1 in Boise's CenturyLink Arena. It felt like Griz players had a 10-to-1 advantage, too. Montana played what head coach Travis DeCuire said was his team's best defensive effort in his five seasons there, Ahmaad Rorie was unstoppable offensively and the regular-season champion Griz flatted Weber State 78-49 to advance to their eighth tournament final in 10 seasons.
Weber State (18-15) finished its tournament run with a fitting ode to its regular-season: one of the strongest performances of the year in roughing up PSU in the quarterfinals, then turning around and getting blasted by Montana (25-8) for the worst tournament loss in school history. "They ice the ball screens ... we tried to make some adjustments. The last two games (against Montana), we made some adjustments. We made adjustments tonight, they figured it out a bit," WSU head coach Randy Rahe said. "We were able to combat it the last two games but weren't able to combat it tonight. We had a hard time scoring so it snowballed on us." Rorie was the catalyst from start to finish. Montana asked him to guard Jerrick Harding instead of smaller guards like Michael Oguine, and he limited Harding to six points and eight shot attempts. But his offensive prowess put a fire under his team and the decidedly pro-Montana crowd as well. Rorie scored 18 points in the first 17 minutes on 7-of-7 shooting, including 3 of 3 from deep. In the end, the senior totaled 28 points, seven rebounds and six assists on 10-of-14 shooting.
