Fabijan Krslovic wasn’t expected to play Saturday afternoon.
Not only did the Montana center, with a sleeve on his right elbow and tape extended up his lower right arm, take the court in Cheney, he changed the way Montana earned an important early conference road sweep with a 65-59 win over Eastern Washington.
“Yesterday all day on the bus ride, film in the morning before the bus ride, I’m trying to figure out how to win this game without Fab,” Montana coach Travis DeCuire said in a postgame interview with KGVO Radio. “ … We’re gonna have to go to a lot of 5-out. We’re going to have to run it up and down the floor. We might need to score 95 to get the win because we’re going to have a hard time getting stops.”
Turns out, Montana only needed about two-thirds of those points with Krslovic playing a key role. After a hard fall in Montana’s win over Idaho on Thursday, Krslovic’s swollen wrist kept him out of practice Friday and was only determined to be useful enough Saturday morning after long therapy sessions with trainer Justin Hunt.
“At the last minute I had to change our whole offensive plan and our whole defensive plan with him in,” DeCuire said. “He was phenomenal. Once again — we’re 2-0 in three years — Fab is the one who guards their best player and gets the stops down the stretch to win the game for us.”
Krslovic’s presence in the post marginalized high-scoring Eastern senior forward Jake Wiley in the first half and then cut off the penetration of Eastern’s offensive leader, junior point forward Bogdan Bliznyuk, in the second. While Krslovic was controlling the paint, Sophomore Michael Oguine scored 17 in the second half and the Griz hit 9 of their final 10 free throws to clinch the win.
Wiley, a former Griz and a two-time NAIA All-American before earning a graduate transfer waiver to play his final season at EWU, finished just 3 for 10 from the field and Bliznyuk needed 14 shots to net 12 in the second half.
“They claim to have the best front court in the conference and we hold them to 13 for 40, so I’ll take it,” DeCuire said, with the Griz now 8-9 and 3-1 in the Big Sky.
For Montana, the hope is that a sweep of it first conference road trip will offset a home loss to Weber State. The reality is that it became the first team to beat Eastern at home this season and the first Big Sky school to sweep the Idaho-Eastern Washington road swing since the Vandals moved back to the Big Sky in 2014. The last time Montana beat Idaho and Eastern on the road in the same weekend was in 1994.
“This is going to be a very difficult one for anyone to get,” DeCuire said of the Thursday/Saturday sweep. “We said we needed one, but we didn’t say we were going to get one.
“With this one it was a quick turnaround, stayed light, didn’t do too much in practice. (We were) keeping them fresh to come out and be the aggressor.”
That’s not exactly how the game went. Eastern held the lead for nearly the entirety of the first half, a bullish session that ended with the Eagles up 25-23 and both teams nursing sub-40 shooting percentages. Neither Ahmaad Rorie nor Oguine scored a point and for the first time this year Montana didn’t hit a three in a half.
Oguine made sure that didn’t continue with back-to-back corner threes that helped Montana to a quick 8-0 run and a 31-25 lead early in the second half. The two triples matched Oguine’s season total and were a signs of things to come for the sophomore guard. After Walter Wright and Rorie combined to score 12 straight to cut a six-point Eastern lead to 53-51, Oguine’s fourth and final three three put the Griz in front with 4:35 to play.
The lead exchanged hands five times over the next 3:30 with Eastern going in front for the final time on Sir Washington’s layup with 1:00 left on the clock. Wright quickly put Montana in the lead with two free throws, the first of seven Montana hit over the final moments.
“We struggled to finish games and we took a couple shots I didn’t like, but we were still in attack mode,” DeCuire said. “We got stops when we needed to get them and we made free throws and a couple big shots.
“You’ll go back and be selfish and say, ‘Man, we could be 4-0.’ But we don’t need to do that. Just keep growing and get to the next step.”
NOTES: Wright led Montana with 19. Oguine scored 17 and Rorie 12. … Wiley came into the game averaging 25 points and 9.5 rebounds during conference play. He finished with 10 and 14. … Krslovic played 31 minutes. … Mario Dunn missed his second consecutive game. … There were 17 lead changes.
