The problem historically with recruiting at Montana is that while we can recruit a top-flight player every now and then--a Micheal Ray Richardson, Larry Krystkowiak or Derrick Pope--it's hard to put together back-to-back or even better back-to-back-to-back years, where every class is solid, and we wind up with a deep championship-caliber team. The year Micheal Ray was a senior, he was a virtual one-man gang, John Stroeder and little else. Ditto Krystkowiak's tenure, during which we had mediocre guard play. And while Wayne Tinkle, another premier big was on the way, the gap between him and Krystkowiak--freshman to senior--was too great for us to have a real solid big-man tandem. Tinks didn't emerge until Krysko was gone. That's why I'm looking at "groupings" of recruiting classes and why I'm so positive about DeCuire. Here is the way I would rank the all-time best groupings in the history of our program--that is, guys who were not only in the program together, but solid contributors to the team.
#1: Qvale, Selvig, Cherry, Jamaar. Three trips to the NCAA tournament--New Mexico, Wisconsin, Syracuse--and one grand thumping of UCLA at Pauley. (Remember, we were denied a fourth NCAA appearance by some terrible homer refs at Northern Colorado.) With these four guys on the floor at one time, they may have been the all-time best team ever at Montana.
#2: The Fabulous Frosh, plus Russ Sheriff. Ray Howard, Al Dunham and Zip Rhoades came in in one class, followed the next year by big-man Sheriff out of Helena. Howard's career--and this group--was devastated by a career-ending knee injury, one today that would be fixed good-as-new, so they never performed up to their gaudy potential. Yet for time, this was one of the all-time great recruiting coups at Montana, as pulled off by the legendary Jiggs Dahlberg.
#3: The current DeCuire regime. Year after next, at the same time, Montana will have three three-star recruits on the floor at the same time--Pridgett, Oguine, Rorie. If Alphonso Anderson, a four-star recruit joins, that will be a class of unprecedented potential at Montana. When is the last time a coach at Montana in a two-year span has brought in three three-star recruits? My only hesitation ranking them higher is, we do not yet have that three-star big man, as we had in the groups listed above. But the funny thing is, Montana has had little trouble producing good, even homegrown big men--Krystkowiak, Selvig, Engellant, Howard, Sheriff, not to mention out-of-staters Tinkle and Qvale. We might have two on the team already, if Krslovic continues to improve, and Boehning develops.
Great times to be a Griz basketball fan.
#1: Qvale, Selvig, Cherry, Jamaar. Three trips to the NCAA tournament--New Mexico, Wisconsin, Syracuse--and one grand thumping of UCLA at Pauley. (Remember, we were denied a fourth NCAA appearance by some terrible homer refs at Northern Colorado.) With these four guys on the floor at one time, they may have been the all-time best team ever at Montana.
#2: The Fabulous Frosh, plus Russ Sheriff. Ray Howard, Al Dunham and Zip Rhoades came in in one class, followed the next year by big-man Sheriff out of Helena. Howard's career--and this group--was devastated by a career-ending knee injury, one today that would be fixed good-as-new, so they never performed up to their gaudy potential. Yet for time, this was one of the all-time great recruiting coups at Montana, as pulled off by the legendary Jiggs Dahlberg.
#3: The current DeCuire regime. Year after next, at the same time, Montana will have three three-star recruits on the floor at the same time--Pridgett, Oguine, Rorie. If Alphonso Anderson, a four-star recruit joins, that will be a class of unprecedented potential at Montana. When is the last time a coach at Montana in a two-year span has brought in three three-star recruits? My only hesitation ranking them higher is, we do not yet have that three-star big man, as we had in the groups listed above. But the funny thing is, Montana has had little trouble producing good, even homegrown big men--Krystkowiak, Selvig, Engellant, Howard, Sheriff, not to mention out-of-staters Tinkle and Qvale. We might have two on the team already, if Krslovic continues to improve, and Boehning develops.
Great times to be a Griz basketball fan.
