Leading the way for the Wildcats was sophomore Dusty Baker with 20 points and six rebounds, shooting 3-for-4 from three-point range. “He’s got such a great poise about him and he never gets rattled,” Rahe said of Baker. “He’s a lot tougher than he looks. He’s got that nice cute face, the nice hair, but he’s got a mean streak in him when it’s time to compete. He was huge and played with a lot of toughness. We don’t win the game without him.” The game started with a battle down low between WSU’s Zach Braxton and UM’s Martin Breunig, as both scored the first eight points for their respective team to tie the game up at 8.
The game went back a forth, but then Baker fueled a big 18-5 run over eight minutes of play to take a 30-20 lead. Breunig had the last bucket of the half, making the score 30-22 as both teams headed to the locker room.
The Wildcat defense forced nine first half turnovers and held the Grizzlies to a shooting percentage of 38.5 from the field while shooting 48 percent on the other end. The Grizzlies came out hot to start the second half with an 8-0 run to tie the game at 30. The remainder of the game was a physical back-and-forth battle, but the Wildcats managed to put together an 11-1 run over five minutes of play to match their largest lead of the night at 50-40 with less than three minutes to play.
Montana wasn’t done, and cut the lead to five with a 5-1 run to make the score 56-51 with less than a minute to play. Despite shooting 69 percent form the free-throw line in the game, Weber State was 12-for-16 in the last three minutes of the game to maintain the lead and claim the 60-54 victory. A fight appeared to break out as teams shook each other’s hands after the game. Wildcat freshman Juwan Williams grabbed Walter Wright by his jersey in the front and exchanged words. Coaches tried to remedy the situation as soon as they could, but the large group of people in the vicinity made the task difficult.
“I don’t know what happened,” Rahe said of the incident. “I hate it. I’m going to find out what happened. We’ve got a nice rivalry with Montana going, but they’re quality people up there. We’ll find out what happened. If one of our guys did something, they will regret it. That’s not who we are.” With sole possession of first place, the Wildcats will now head on the road for their final two games of conference play against Idaho and Eastern Washington.
