Big Sky Conference

Selvig’s influence still strong throughout the Big Sky

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Robin Selvig looked like man of the thousands clad in maroon at Dahlberg Arena Saturday before the Lady Griz tipped off against their fierce rivals from Montana State.

Selvig stood in line on the west side of the Adams Center waiting to buy a bucket of popcorn and a soda. He exchanged pleasantries with anyone who noticed him, the always humble legend not seeking the spotlight like others with his level of fame might.

The difference between Selvig and everyone else at Dahlberg on Saturday is, of course, Selvig’s peerless resume carved out during his fabled 38 years as the head coach of Montana’s women’s basketball team. No one else has 24 conference championship rings in their possession. No one else sitting in the stands of an arena where dozens of championship banners hang has such a stark connection to the roots of women’s basketball in the Big Sky Conference.

On Saturday, Selvig watched the fiercest rivalry in the Big Sky for the first time from the stands. The man who won 865 games, posted 31 20-win seasons and advanced to 21 NCAA Tournaments was a spectator with the Bobcats in Missoula for the first time after retiring at the end of last season.

UM head coach Shannon Schweyen

UM head coach Shannon Schweyen

“It’s a definite difference for everyone but it’s one of those things where it was eventually going to happen,” first-year head coach Shannon Schweyen, an assistant under Selvig for 24 years, said in a few weeks prior to her first Cat-Griz game as UM’s head coach. “You bring in new people, have a different energy, a different vibe in practice every day.

“It’s a different year, a different era. We certainly talk about his values and his focus and the things that made Lady Griz basketball what it was. We talk about those things every day. He’s certainly still a part of it.”

This year’s Lady Griz squad is the polar opposite of the consistently dominate Big Sky program, a position UM held for decades. Montana has battled adversity, namely season-ending injuries to preseason Big Sky MVP Kayleigh Valley and All-Big Sky center Alycia Sims. Following Saturday’s 75-69 overtime loss to Montana State, the Lady Griz are 0-11 in Big Sky play, 3-19 overall. Montana has one Division I win: a 61-56 win over Incarnate Word in Missoula on November 23.

“It’s been a learning process for me,” said Schweyen, who squeezed out 59 points from freshmen alone in the first of two Cat-Griz matchups this season. “I have never as a player or a coach been a part of a season quite like this one. We have refocused our goals instead of it be win the league or the regular season conference. Our goal is to try find something positive from each game and feel like we are getting better on a daily basis. Sometimes, those might not come in wins. We have to try to keep this group moving forward and keep their chins up because they are so young.”

Former UM head coach Robin Selvig

Former UM head coach Robin Selvig

Selvig, a native of Outlook who played for Judd Heathcote on the UM men’s team, took over a fledgling women’s basketball program in 1978, just a few years after Title IX changed women’s college athletics forever. Montana won 20 games during the 1980-81 season, the first of 18 straight 20-win seasons. UM won the Northwest women’s basketball league two straight seasons before joining the Mountain West in 1982, winning the conference five times in six seasons. The Lady Griz peaked in the early 1990s when Schweyen — Shannon Cate back then — was an All-American forward. UM won six NCAA Tournament games, including advancing to the second round four times between 1988 and 1995.

Montana continued its conference dominance — the Big Sky added women’s basketball in 1988 — Selvig’s final two decades, advancing to the Big Dance 10 times between 1996 and 2015. But the success at the highest level eluded Selvig during he second half of his 38-year career. Still, his legacy is unparalleled and the influence he had on women’s basketball in the West is undeniable.

“He gave our conference national recognition that wouldn’t have come without what he did at Montana,” Idaho eighth-year head coach Jon Newlee said in January. “It’s great for our conference and it’s great for women’s basketball out in the West to have such an icon do the things he did in his career at Montana.”

“He absolutely is one of the all-time greats,” added North Dakota fifth-year head coach Travis Brewster earlier this year. “I remember when I got this job, he called me and congratulated me. He’s a class act from top to bottom. He grew the game, grew the conference of the Big Sky with the Lady Griz’s style of play and success.”

Idaho head coach Jon Newlee

Idaho head coach Jon Newlee

Newlee first became acclimated with Selvig’s prowess during his time as an assistant for Rhonda Rompola at Southern Methodist. The Mustangs consistently played the Lady Griz in non-conference matchups. In 2002, Newlee took over as the head coach at Idaho State. By his second season, he had the Bengals consistently competing with the Lady Griz for Big Sky titles.

Newlee managed to lead ISU to the WNIT three times and into the NCAA Tournament in 2007. Each season, he knew he’d have to get past Selvig if his team wanted to go dancing. Newlee left ISU for the head coaching job at Idaho in 2008 but still played UM often in the non-conference gams before UI rejoined the Big Sky in basketball in 2014.

“We have had a lot of wars with a Hall of Famer,” Newlee said. “I always got up to play the Griz and Robin because he’s such an awesome coach. When I got the job at Idaho State, I knew we were going to have to beat the Griz to win the Big Sky. I wanted to get a team with shooters because they were running that 2-3 zone. They morphed into a team with long guards and tough posts. You had to try to defend that and score on that. You try to shoot them out of that zone and then all of a sudden, they become a great man basketball team. That’s Robin’s brilliance.”

Gene Roebuck often matched wits with Selvig during 24 wildly successful seasons as UND’s head coach. But North Dakota’s first season in the Big Sky in 2012 was Roebuck’s last at the helm. Brewster took over and tried to build his program like the Lady Griz.

Former head coach Robin Selvig coaching with current UM head coach Shannon Schweyen (R)

Former head coach Robin Selvig coaching with current UM head coach Shannon Schweyen (R)

Brewster said he learned early on when battling Selvig’s teams that if there was a flaw in UND’s game plan, Selvig would exploit it. If North Dakota’s coach did not make an adjustment, Selvig would hammer the weakness relentlessly.

“He’s sly like a fox when he was coaching,” Brewster said. “He was really good when he was exploiting something if you weren’t ready to make an adjustment. He made you a better coach, made all our teams better. I hate to see him gone but at the same time, it’s one of those things where it’s time for the rest of the coaches in the league to step up and continue what he started.”

In 2005, Tricia Binford took over a rebuilding Montana State women’s program that, at the time, was light years behind the Lady Griz. Binford lost her first five matchups with Selvig before a 91-87 victory over the Lady Griz in Bozeman in 2008.

It wasn’t until 2011 that MSU finally broke through in Missoula for Binford’s first win in Dahlberg Arena. After that game, Selvig called Binford to offer congratulations and encouragement.

During her 11 seasons at MSU in which Selvig coached at UM, Binford defeated Selvig seven times in 25 matchups, including winning twice in Missoula and eliminating Montana from the 2012 Big Sky Tournament. All the while, Binford could see Selvig’s footprint on the league both when playing the Lady Griz and when playing other teams in the Big Sky.

UM head coach Shannon Schweyen (L) with MSU head coach Tricia Binford (R)

UM head coach Shannon Schweyen (L) with MSU head coach Tricia Binford (R)

“He definitely influenced the league,” Binford said in January. “If you look across the board, I think there are some really fantastic coaches in our league. I think everyone had to raise the bar to what Robin established, particularly on the defensive end. I think you are looking at a conference that has some of the best defensive teams because they had to grow in that element for what Robin established.”

Seton Sobolewski took over at Idaho State after Newlee’s departure and has kept Idaho State among the top programs in the Big Sky. Sobolewski was the 2012 Big Sky Coach of the Year after leading the Bengals to the NCAA Tournament. The Bengals played for the conference tournament title last spring. Like his colleagues, much of that success can be traced back to Selvig, Sobolewski said.

“There’s all these different states we went through to compete with Montana over the years. It started being able to battle with him rebounding and we got a little better at that,” Sobolewski said. “Way back when, it was about if you could get them to break out of their 2-3 zone or score on their 2-3 zone well enough to have a chance to win. There’s so many different ways he’s pushed us to try to get better to compete with him. He’s a legend in his own right and one of the most successful coaches in the history of women’s basketball.”

Saturday’s rivalry game seemed different without Selvig’s colorful personality lighting up Dahlberg. But the magic of the arena — something Selvig’s teams capitalized in compiling an unbelievable 511-61 mark at home — seemed for a moment like it might swallow up the visiting Bobcats once again.

Former UM head coach Robin Selvig

Former UM head coach Robin Selvig

The underdog Lady Griz matched the reigning Big Sky champion Bobcats blow for blow for three quarters. In the fourth frame, Montana nailed nine of its first 10 shots to build a 60-51 lead. The crowd of 3,223 roared and it would be fair for one to wonder if a fairytale moment was brewing even with Selvig sitting in the stands.

The way the rivalry game ended symbolically stamped the ushering in of a new era. MSU closed regulation on a 9-0 run to force overtime, then won the extra frame 15-9 to earn a 75-69 victory.

The impact of Selvig’s first season not roaming the sidelines is directly reflected in the Big Sky standings. While Northern Colorado, North Dakota, MSU, Eastern Washington and Idaho battling for league supremacy, Montana sits at the bottom. The Lady Griz have a chance for a breakthrough with struggling Southern Utah — the Thunderbirds are 0-11 in league as well — coming to Missoula on Thursday.

Regardless of how the young Lady Griz finish up their first season since Jimmy Carter was the President of the United States without Selvig, his absence has already been felt around the Big Sky and his inspiration lives on.

Former UM head coach Robin Selvig coaching former UM guard McCalle Feller

Former UM head coach Robin Selvig coaching former UM guard McCalle Feller

“When you have a Hall of Fame coach and person around, you want to learn everything you can from him for as long as you can,” Brewster said in an email to Skyline Sports. “Losing Robin from the coaching profession is like having your favorite teacher retire before you’re done with school. It’s understandable that he thought it was time to step away, but I wanted more time with him. Thank you, Robin, for all you have done for the game and for players and coaches like me.”

Photos by Brooks Nuanez. All Rights Reserved.

About Colter Nuanez

Colter Nuanez is the co-founder and senior writer for Skyline Sports. After spending six years in the newspaper industry with stops at the Missoulian, the Ellensburg Daily Record and the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, the former Washington Newspaper Association Sportswriter of the Year and University of Montana Journalism School graduate ('09) has cultivated a deep passion for sports journalism during his 13-year career covering the Big Sky Conference. In August of 2014, Colter and brother Brooks merged their passions of writing and art to found Skyline Sports.

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