MISSOULA — Randy Rahe faces an almost identical scenario as Travis DeCuire faced last week. The two biggest differences? The Big Sky Conference crown is on the line in Missoula on Thursday and Rahe’s Weber State Wildcats will be on the brunt end of a second straight crowd stoked for a rivalry affair.
Two weeks ago, DeCuire’s Montana Grizzlies had their 13-game winning streak snapped on a road trip through Cheney to play surging Eastern Washington and Moscow to play hard-nosed Idaho. Last week, DeCuire challenged his team to use the losses as motivation with the goal of surging through its final three home games and enter the Big Sky Tournament in Reno next week on the upswing.
This week, Rahe is staked with accomplishing a similar task. Weber State had its nine-game winning streak snapped by dropping a pair of games at home. Eastern Washington overcame 14 made Weber 3-pointers and made the hosts look fatigued in a 75-70 win in Ogden— a circumstance to be expected given Rahe’s seven-man rotation.
Two nights later, the Vandal veterans were too much for Weber State’s inexperienced roster to manage as Idaho posted a 68-62 win for their first victory in Ogden since 1991.
“I wish we weren’t going up there to bounce back,” Rahe, who became the all-time leader in Big Sky history in wins in his 12th season at the helm, said with a chuckle on Tuesday.
“You don’t have to do a lot to motivate our guys when you have a chance to play Montana. This year, they’ve had such a good season and they are probably the best team in our league. That motivates us automatically.”
Weber State head coach Randy Rahe a/ by Brooks Nuanez
Meanwhile, DeCuire’s Griz blasted rival Montana State in historic fashion. Montana shot 61 percent after halftime and smothered MSU star Tyler Hall for the duration of the action to post a 90-67 victory in front of the largest crowd at Dahlberg Arena in seven years. The margin of victory marked the second-largest in a rivalry that started in 1902 and has spanned 247 match-ups.
On Thursday in Missoula, Rahe will try to get his team back on track after two straight losses to the identical opponents that defeated the Griz. But the latest showdown between the two premier programs in the Big Sky has larger ramifications. If Montana wins, the Grizzlies will secure their first outright Big Sky title since 2013.
“You want to say we treat every game the same, take it one game at a time but when it comes to March, it’s a little different,” UM junior guard Michael Oguine said before Tuesday’s practice at Dahlberg. “The stakes are a little higher. We have some guys who are experiencing it for the first time. March, everything is turned up so it’s going to be wild, especially with the chance to clinch outright.”
If Montana can win Thursday or Saturday against Idaho State, the Griz will clinch their 10th Big Sky title. If Weber State can sweep UM and Montana State and Montana gets swept, the Wildcats will earn a share of the 23rd regular-season title in program history, including the sixth under Rahe, the four-time Big Sky Coach of the Year.
“They have set the tone in the conference these last few years so it will be a big one for us,” Oguine said. “We only get one crack at them this year in the regular season so we are going to try to take advantage of that. It will be good momentum heading into the conference tournament if we can take down Weber so we are going to try to get that done on Thursday.”
Former Weber State forward Joel Bolomboy (21) posting up former Montana forward Martin Breunig (12) in 2016/by Brooks Nuanez
Montana has already secured a first-round bye in next week’s Big Sky Tournament in Reno. The Griz can earn the No. 1 seed with one win in their final two games and cannot finish lower than third. The Wildcats are the only other team in the league that have clinched a spot in Thursday’s quarterfinals via their sweep of fifth-place Northern Colorado. Weber can finish as high as No. 1 and as low as No. 4.
“This is what you hope,” Rahe said. “You hope in league play that you have a chance coming down the stretch. If you would’ve told me two months ago that we would be sitting where we are at right now with the team we have and the lack of depth, I would’ve been pretty surprised but I really like how this team has come together.”
Rahe has been able to lure some of the premier talent the league has seen in the 21st century to Ogden. Damian Lillard went from two-time Big Sky Most Valuable Player to the No. 6 selection in the NBA Draft and now a three-time NBA All-Star for the Portland Trailblazers.
Joel Bolomboy led the Wildcats to their last NCAA Tournament berth before forging a career that currently has him with the Milwaukee Bucks.
Last season, Jeremy Senglin set the Big Sky’s all-time record for 3-pointers in a career and flirted with the league’s career scoring record, eventually finishing second and earning a shot with the Brooklyn Nets.
This season, with sophomore Jerrick Harding (22 points per game) as the focal point of the offense that also features sharp-shooting seniors Ryan Richardson and Dusty Baker and bruising 6-foot-9, 250-pound junior center Zach Braxton has gotten Weber State in position for another run despite seven healthy contributors and just a pair of seniors. That core plus the acclimation of former Utah transfer Brekkott Chapman and the ability to absorb with the season-ending losses of Cody John and Jordan Dallas have been crucial.
Weber State lost its Big Sky opener 62-60 to Idaho State, the Bengals’ first win in Ogden in more than a decade. The Wildcats ripped off 12 wins in the next 13 games games to get back into the league title hunt.
Montana junior point guard Ahmaad Rorie/ by Brooks Nuanez
“If kids fit your culture, they get better quickly,” Rahe said. “We lost Cody John for the season, Jordan Dallas for the season and our depth went to seven. We’ve been playing seven all year. That’s ok as long as you have a bunch of kids who are willing to come to work every day that are willing to play for each other who have toughness and competitiveness, you can find a way to be in games.”
“At the beginning when we had those injuries, new guys coming in and stepping into those roles, I think that was tough for us to find our identity,” Richardson added. “Now that we have found our identity a little bit with those guys back healthy, we are starting to see what our rotation is going to be like. We are starting to click. We’ve had more downs than ups this year but we are starting to find our groove.”
Montana has climbed to the top of the league with a stout inside-out attack paced by Oguine and junior point guard Ahmaad Rorie fueling a post game led by senior Fabijan Krslovic and junior Jamar Akoh. The Wildcats operate in a similar fashion, letting the explosive Harding use his tremendous first step to penetrate and create while Braxton and Chapman man the paint and Richardson and Baker reign from the perimeter.
“Most teams in the league don’t match up with us or Montana in the post,” said Richardson, who is shooting 48 percent from beyond the arc and became the 33rd player in Weber history to surpass 1,000 career points last weekend. . “In my opinion, we have the two best big men in the conference because of sheer size alone. It’s hard to move Zach. Now Zach is going up against someone who’s like a clone of himself (Akoh), which I’ve never seen him really do except our sophomore year when we played Xavier in the tournament.
“I think it will be a fun matchup to watch them go at each other. They have talented guards, we have talented guards. I think it’s going to be an all-out battle to see who comes out on top.”
In Weber’s last trip to Missoula, Senglin drilled a 3-pointer at the overtime buzzer to lift the Wildcats to an 84-81 victory, Weber’s first win in Missoula this decade. UM got revenge in Ogden, winning 78-74. Weber ousted Montana in the Big Sky Tournament championship game two seasons ago, revenge for the Big Sky title games the Wildcats lost in Missoula Lillard’s final two seasons at Weber State.
Weber State guard Dusty Baker (25)/by Brooks Nunaez
On Thursday, Montana will try to cap a historic season by beating a storied rival and hanging a banner.
“We control our own destiny,” Rorie said. “We are trying to get ready this week for Weber. They are a good team, Idaho State is a good team as well. We know we can do it on Thursday.”
“Last year, they beat us on a buzzer-beater so we are not trying to let that happen again. We are trying to do whatever we can to get the win and hang that banner.
Photos by Brooks Nuanez and Jason Bacaj. All Rights Reserved.
