Despite its real meaning, Montana State safety Caden Dowler probably doesn’t want to hear it before he steps on the football field. Dowler has either had his three seasons at MSU cut short or start late due to some kind of injury or another. He missed the first three games of his true freshman season, then was injured in practice after the first game and missed the rest of 2023. Last season was lost when he went down after starting the first six games with a torn ACL.

The Bobcats have been looking for leaders after losing 12 starters to graduation or transfers in the offseason. Typically, teams tab seniors and players that have had all-conference recognition. Despite all the injuries and consequent lack of playing time, when MSU’s captains were announced last month, Dowler heard his name called.

“The big one to me is Caden Dowler,” MSU defensive coordinator Shawn Howe said. “Dowler has had to deal with some injuries and stuff like that. Now he’s back, we’re feeling his presence. We certainly felt it in the scrimmage the other day. You just look up and you go, ‘this is not only a guy who’s a good football player. This is a guy who really makes us better as a unit, a guy who communicates at an elite level.’

“He’s a guy that really brings guys up. He’s constantly pulling guys up, he’s holding guys accountable. It’s almost like having another hand on the coaching staff.”

Even when Dowler was hurt last season, his role on the team was easily apparent. He would be one of the first hype men to congratulate teammates after big plays and his presence and energy was undeniable.

“First and foremost, the example Caden set – it was perfectly clear to anybody on this team and in this organization that Caden is doing anything he can to put himself back in position,” Montana State head coach Brent Vigen said. “That was not easy and it wasn’t the first time he had been injured. ‘Am I going to go through this all again?’ He flipped that switch quickly.

“That example through last fall was impressive. I’m certain his connection with his twin brother and Taco staying, I’m sure that’s a natural draw to the group, back to the core of this team. But they are also different personalities and Caden in the off-season, you could tell made another jump to get out in front a little bit more.

“Coming out of Billings West, I don’t think any of this personality, this leadership would’ve surprised his coaches there. His ability to persevere, his work habits, his no-nonsense approach, his ability to be this great teammate is why a guy like him who haven’t played a ton is elected a captain.”

Howe’s admiration for Dowler, who is the twin brother of MSU’s star receiver and punt returner, Taco Dowler, doesn’t end with his play on the field.

“Caden Dowler is a guy you want to marry one of your nieces,” Howe said without a hint of trying to be humorous.

Dowler has emerged out of his brother’s shadow not just due to his play but also his resilience. His leadership qualities began showing up in the weight room as he worked to recover from his many injuries with a vigor that caught everyone’s attention.

“Adversity is met with the ultimate ferocity with him,” Howe said. “This guy is like, ‘hey, you can put me down. You can’t put me out. You can send whatever you want to send at me and whether that’s injuries or whatever it is, I’m gonna see it, I’m gonna get better because of it and I’m gonna attack it.’

“He’s the same guy every day whether he’s hurt or whether he’s playing. I remember having a talk with him maybe a year ago or a little less and I just told him, ‘the way you carry yourself buddy, you don’t ever have to feel like you’re not a leader because you can’t play and are currently hurt’ and he just said, ‘ya know I really appreciate that, I do think about that at times.’

“He just started to almost attack it after that. Like, hey I’m gonna be hurt, but I’m gonna do what I can for this team and if I’m hurt all I can do is lead and all I can do is coach and all I can do is teach and help these guys learn the way I learn because he’s unbelievably smart. I’ve seen him attack this thing like you can’t even believe and he’s just as good of a person, as good of a football player, as smart of a man, as intentional as anybody you’re ever gonna meet.”

The Bobcat’ secondary was wiped clean after 2024 with starting safeties Rylan Ortt and Dru Polidore, along with starting cornerbacks Andrew Powdrell and Simeon Woodard, and starting nickelback Miles Jackson all gone. Ortt, Woodard and Jackson all saw their eligibility expire, while Polidore and Powdrell hit the transfer portal. The departures aren’t something Dowler tries to avoid thinking about.

“The question for the entire team is the secondary,” Dowler said in recognizing the doubt that fans and media alike have cast upon the unit. “We’ve had a really good off season. Corners as you can tell are really young and I think, personally, it takes a year for most guys to develop. Those corners have developed so fast over this offseason and not only on the football field but just as humans doing stuff right on and off the field. The biggest learning curve for them is just consistency and they’ve worked on that really well.”

Dowler has mastered what it takes to bounce back from the devastation that comes with injuries when you’re a high-end athlete.  

“The biggest thing is being able to control what you can control,” Dowler said. “When you go down, when you get hurt that’s not what you want obviously, but I want to make the best decision. How can I put myself in a position for next year or the year after or whenever? It may be that I’m back and I can just step in and kind of immediately make a difference. So, I thought I might as well be a positive impact. It helped having Taco on the field because that’s my other half so that helped a lot. Being able to cheer him on, it cheered me up on Saturdays for sure.”

The effect his twin brother has is obvious when you listen to Dowler talk. He sees the effect his brother has not only on himself but on all the people around MSU.

“You walk in here and even during warmups there’s little kids draped over the railing wearing Taco hats and Taco shirts and Taco shorts,” Dowler said. “So, him having success is, I don’t want to say it, but it’s my success, too. I feel it when he has all that support, that I was at least part of something that had to do with that because him and I are the closest that any two people can be. It definitely made a difference (in Dowler’s rehabs).”

Dowler and his brother come from a rich history of Billings West players who have donned the blue and gold. Teammate and defensive tackle Paul Brott, who was also named a captain, is from West as is starting linebacker Neil Daily and offensive tackle Braden Zimmer, who is battling for a starting spot. Freshman Malachi Claunch is also a West grad.

“I loved my time there and we had a ton of great coaches while we were playing there,” Dowler said. “Whether it was coach Mikey Rider, who played safety (at MSU) or coach Hollowell, who’s our defensive coordinator, who was also a D coordinator at Rocky at one point. We had a lot of people around us that were really smart football minds that kind of instilled that in us. You see it a lot here when you are sometimes a step ahead because we had such great coaches in high school. The culture around West High is really cool too. We just want to win in everything we do so it helps a lot.”

The FCS No. 2 ranked Bobcats are in the process of preparing for their home season opener when they entertain South Dakota State the current No. 2 team in the nation. Before they even entered preseason camp, they knew that they needed to shake off their disappointing 35-32 loss to North Dakota State in the national title game. 

“(That game) sticks with us,” Dowler said. “Knowing that everyone starts back at 0-0. We got a whole new team. Kind of like last year we’re just trying to take every day for itself. Be 1-0 every day and that is a motivating and driving factor.

“It shifts from focusing on us and our offense. Going against our offense for three weeks to finally seeing some new concepts. New runs, new passes. We’ll really dive into them. We’ll study up hard and play our hardest. We know when we play our hardest, we can hang with anyone.”

The big senior defensive tackle, 6-foot-3 and 284 pounds with No. 99 plastered across his chest, isn’t exactly hard to find.

As they prepare to play South Dakota State in the national title game on Sunday, the Grizzlies again have one of the best defenses in the nation, a unit that’s driven this year’s Montana team to Frisco, Texas, and the brink of immortality. Gubner is the fat slice of why. 

But to see that, you have to really watch him. Watch, because what he does won’t show up in the stats, and concentrate, because Gubner operates in muddled scrums on the line of scrimmage, the desperate trench warfare for leverage that most fans disregard but that decides games as surely as any quarterback’s throwing arm or receiver’s speed.

To appreciate him – to see how special he really is – requires time, effort and knowledge. It’s a test. That’s why coaches – his own, those in his league and those across the country – love talking about him.

“I think Gub’s the best defensive player in our league,” Montana head coach Bobby Hauck said simply at the Big Sky Kickoff in July.

“He’s very disruptive, and that’s what makes him different. Some of the best things that he does don’t show up on the stat sheet,” Montana defensive line coach Mike Linehan said. “I mean, he causes offenses sometimes to get away from stuff that they want to do, because he’s just always in the backfield. It’s hard to block him. So they have to change up their schemes a little bit, which is only good for us.”

“I think it all starts with 99,” Northern Colorado coach Ed Lamb said before the Bears played Montana in late October. “The thing that makes it hard is, even though you might be able to sniff out the blitz and where it’s coming from, you still have to deal with No. 99, whether you have to single protect against him or get him blocked somehow in the run game. To me, that’s where it’s built around. He makes that whole thing go.”

“He’s the one that sets the point for them up front and can cut a formation in half,” now-former North Dakota State head coach Matt Entz said before the semifinal classic between the Griz and the Bison. “He doesn’t have gaudy stats, but you know where he is on every snap.”

The Big Sky coaches chose Gubner as the best defensive player in the league this year although he had just 39 tackles in 14 games, a testament to Gubner’s talent that speaks as loudly as any number of glowing quotes.

If a defensive tackle has every coach who plays him gushing, then you know he’s a good one. Gubner is a very good one, the twisting, penetrating, relentless force at the heart of Montana’s defensive line, a “dancing bear” whose uniqueness is showcased in his versatility. He’s strong enough to stand up to double teams, agile enough to execute Montana’s endless stunts and skilled enough to drop back into coverage on zone blitzes, as he did for multiple of his four interceptions – the highest total on the team – as a redshirt freshman in 2019.

Most importantly, he’s selfless enough to revel in the punishing responsibilities of a defensive tackle, a position that takes the brunt of the opposing line’s attention and force, play after play, with little chance of recording a tackle to statistically confirm that effort.

“I came here to play for the Montana Grizzlies, and all I want is for us to win, for us to succeed every Saturday and to have our defense dominate,” Gubner said. “I don’t care if I don’t get any tackles, or that I get double-teamed, triple-teamed, that it’s not pretty and my body’s not liking it. I’m doing what’s best for the team.”

Four years after his shocking 2019 breakout, Gubner is finishing a career that’s stamped him as one of the greatest defensive players to come through Missoula in decades. He’s crafted a resume that is already untouchable, and could still add one more legendary bullet point in his 58th career start on Sunday if Gub and the Grizzlies beat two-score favorite South Dakota State for one of the greatest upsets in FCS championship history and Montana’s first national title since 2001.

If you take the time to watch Alex Gubner on the field, if you put in the effort to understand his game the way coaches across the country do, you might come to the conclusion that his story is about talent – dominant, inevitable, can’t-miss talent.

But, fittingly for a player who requires and rewards close observation to grasp his true value on the field, keep looking and you’ll realize something else. Alex Gubner’s story isn’t really about inevitability. It’s about hundreds of hours watching film, scratching notes in notebooks. It’s about countless double teams faced, the sacrifice of taking punishment to let other people make the play. It’s about the burning desire and ambition of a young man who found purpose on the football field, a California kid who found a community of equals in Montana.

“Gubby was the guy that went from very raw, when he was young, and developed into what he is today,” said Barry Sacks, who coached Montana’s defensive line from 2018 through last season. “I was vital in his development, but really, he has been vital in his development. I mean, you can send a message to 100 guys every day of your life and maybe 50% of them are getting the message and then maybe 1% are able to enact it like him.

“It’s really cool to see people recognize this guy. You’re not gonna see all these massive stats on him. I always try to say, football is not always what shows up on a piece of paper. Put the film on. Watch the guy and he’s the most disruptive man on the football field. A lot of that development is Montana football, and credit Alex Gubner for having the frame of mind to do it. Statistically, he’s an anomaly.”

***

When Ed Croson first met Gubner, he wasn’t sure what to think.

Until 2021, Croson was the head football coach at Chaminade, an exclusive prep school in Los Angeles that plays in the Mission League – not quite as heralded as its neighbor, the famed Trinity League, but still one of the best high school football conferences in the country.

(Montana basketball legend Michael Oguine – whose Griz career, ironically, was also defined in large part by his selflessness and sacrifice – attended Chaminade. So did Griz linebacker Erich Osteen, and several NFL and MLB players).

These days, Gubner is a stereotypical defensive tackle, nearly 300 pounds with a low center of gravity, incongruously balletic feet and a granite block of a head that sits like an Easter Island statue atop a squat neck.

Back then, he was an 8th-grader sitting next to his father in Croson’s office, with thoughts that he might be a quarterback.

“I met with him and his dad when they were looking at schools and at that time, he thought he was a quarterback,” Croson said. “Now when he was in 8th grade, he looked like a kid in the band. I mean, he didn’t even look like a football player, let alone a quarterback. We met with them, he ended up coming to the school. And he found out pretty quick that he wasn’t a quarterback.”

In fact, Gubner wasn’t much of anything for most of his high school career. They tried him at tight end and at offensive line. During his first two years at Chaminade, Gubner didn’t play no matter where he went.

But while development wasn’t apparent, it was happening. Gubner, like everybody else in high school, was figuring out where he fit in, what he wanted to be. He wasn’t talented – yet – but he was dedicated.

“I wasn’t really held in high regard. I wasn’t the jock in high school or one of those guys, I wasn’t known for football,” Gubner said. “I just love the game and I knew I had the ability to take it somewhere. … I fell in love with football and the camaraderie. All my friends played sports in high school, that’s who I’m closest with. I love the team aspect of it, and I just love everything about the game.”

Even though he wasn’t playing much, Gubner had found where he belonged. He hung out with the football players – the ones who were really serious about it, like Michael Wilson, a receiver who went to Stanford and now plays for the Cardinals. He loved lifting weights and studying film, beginning his habit of filling up spiral notebooks, line by line, with notes on formations and tendencies – “I can barely remember people’s names, so I take notes on what I’m thinking,” Gubner laughed.

As a junior, he started the season out of the lineup, playing defensive end. A plea to Croson to get on the field resulted in a move to offensive line – “I didn’t really get to play in games but in drills, one-on-one pass rush, me at O-line was not pretty,” Gubner recalled – and, finally, to defensive tackle. You can imagine the movie montage – Gubner dropping passes at tight end and getting blown by on the offensive line before finally, blessedly finding the right position as the music swells.

“I only knew a handful of plays,” Gubner said. “But I just kind of started going. I wasn’t thinking, I was just getting off the ball, and the first few series I’m making a bunch of tackles and I’m like, wow, this is fun. This thing just clicked, like a light bulb went off and I was like, yeah, I think this is where I’m supposed to play. … I think athletes know what I’m talking about. You just kind of know right away, you’re making plays, you’re doing well, you feel confident. You’re like, wow, this is why, you know, this is why you play the game.”

As a senior, Gubner was Chaminade’s Lineman of the Year, and a first-team all-conference and all-area selection for a team that was ranked in the top 20 nationally for portions of the season. Gubner had always known there was a place for him on the gridiron. It had just taken him a little longer than most to find it.

“He’s pretty much a self-made guy,” Croson said. “He started out as just a kid on the team, but some kids find themselves as they go through high school. He made friends and he liked lifting weights and he liked being there with his friends. And shoot, by the time he was going into his senior year, I mean, he had just completely changed.

“He was a guy that we never thought much about, really, until he was a junior and then it’d be like, ‘Have you seen him in the weight room?’ For the first couple of years, we didn’t ever think he would amount to anything. But he pushed himself, really made himself into the player that is now.”

***

Gubner’s slow development, it turned out, was a blessing for Montana. Croson thinks that if Gubner had been able to put a full junior year on tape – had been moved to defensive tackle and felt that light bulb switch on just a few weeks earlier – he would have been far out of reach of the Grizzlies.

As it was, he slipped through the cracks. Bob Stitt’s staff originally offered Gubner in the fall of 2017, his senior season at Chaminade. Bobby Hauck’s new staff re-offered him at the end of that season.

“I saw him on film in high school and I said, you know, this guy’s the guy we gotta go on,” Sacks said. “You can’t find guys that nimble and agile in high school, with his size and everything. I was a fan of his from early on.”

Montana, meanwhile, was the perfect match for a player as completely serious about football as Gubner.

“When I first got here, I truly didn’t understand how big of a deal Griz football was,” Gubner said. “So I got here and it’s so special, the culture. Coming in, coach Hauck has us say a creed and knowing Griz football history and all these things. And it was a shocker for an out-of-state guy like me to see that.”

Gubner turned heads with his speed running down on kickoffs in practice as a redshirt freshman in 2018, and spent the year following the example of players like Jesse Sims and David Shaw.

The culture at Montana reinforced everything that he had learned at Chaminade. In high school, Gubner surrounded himself with people who reflected his hard work, his dedication to the weight room and the film room. In college, that was the entire team, and Gubner fit right in.

“He’s a driven young man,” Sacks said. “He loves football. I would go in on Sundays and catch him watching the game (from the day before) and taking notes on himself on a Sunday when he’s just supposed to go report, get treatment and go home. Every Sunday that I’ve walked down, he’s been down there. And oftentimes my evaluations of him were better than how he evaluated himself.”

Ironically for a player who was a regular for just over a season in high school, Gubner broke into Montana’s lineup as a redshirt freshman in 2019 and has remained there ever since. As a redshirt freshman, he had 36 tackles, 2.5 sacks and those four interceptions, plus five more pass breakups (It’s not exactly a fluke because, as mentioned, Gubner has excelled dropping into coverage throughout his career. But he has not recorded another interception since that season, and those five pass breakups remain more than half of his career total of eight).

He’s never recorded more than 44 tackles in a season, but now sits with a career total of 28.5 tackles for loss that has him in the top 20 in Griz history.

Along the way, he’s become an All-American, a pro prospect and a cult figure in a Montana program that reveres defensive stars. To see his trademark celebration where he squats low and double-pumps his fists like a pair of semi truck pistons is something straight out of a WWF bit from the early 1990s. 

Whenever Gubner does the celebration, his defensive teammates go bananas. Whenever it happens at home — like in UM’s 37-7 beat down of rival Montana State when his first half tackle for loss had so much authority, Gubner essentially skipped like a quarter on a pond across the Washington-Grizzly Stadium turf — the UM faithful go berserk. 

For all of Gubner’s weight-room dedication, he’s never been a specimen as cut as the late Sims (who has?) or as hulking as the 6-foot-5, 310-pound Shaw….which only enhances Gubner’s unique appeal – one of the best defensive players in the country, as strong and fast pound-for-pound as anybody on the Griz, looks like he works the day shift on the railroad and stops in at the corner bar for a couple beers on the way home.

On the field, he plays like he has a battery pack in his back, bursting off the line at the snap with the kinetic, startling, single-minded violence of a big cat exploding from cover, chasing down running backs on screens from sideline to sideline and painfully adjusting the worldview of freaked-out quarterbacks who generally assume that they’ll be able to beat a defensive tackle to the corner in a scramble drill.

Sacks said some players look the part but the production doesn’t match the physique. 

“Gub is kind of the reverse. … (Defensive linemen), they have to be quick, fast, have great leverage, be frantic as hell,” Sacks said. “I think, over time, that’s what Gubby has developed. Get off the block, get up, get yourself vertical, make things happen. Be frantic, be vicious.”

During Montana’s 23-21 triumph over Idaho at the Kibbie Dome in October, Gubner went from being relentlessly held — Montana started bringing extra jerseys to road games because his would get torn from all the grabbing – to getting his finger nearly ripped off. He suffered a jam/dislocation so brutal, it broke the skin. 

“Wipe the blood off and put it back in,” Gubner grunted. 

The next series, Gubner was back in the game, hand taped, glove on, tape over the glove, wrecking shop like nothing had ever happened. 

Off the field, he’s gone from “a city slicker to a mountain man,” as the Missoulian’s Frank Gogola wrote earlier in the year, hunting, fishing, hiking and snowmobiling with the crew of Montana-born linebackers like Braxton Hill, Levi Janacaro and Tyler Flink that’s become the heart of the Griz defense and, by extension, the team. 

Perhaps fittingly, the aforementioned Griz core along with senior safety David Koppang and sophomore linebacker Riley Wilson all share a house together. Hill is quick to straighten out the detail everyone is wondering.

“We all buy our own groceries. Are you kidding? Cooking Gub dinner costs like 50 bucks!”

“Yeah, they’re talking about my food bill or something like that. They don’t know what they’re talking about,” Gubner pushed back in an annoyed deadpan. “I don’t eat that much food. It’s kind of a mess, not gonna lie. It’s awesome but at the same time, you know, we got some dirty roommates, especially Braxton Hill actually needs to work on his cleaning skills. Hank Nuce is an abomination. We’re all best friends and we’re pretty close as a house. But yeah, never a dull moment in Hastings house.”

On Sunday, that group and their teammates have the chance to do something that Montana hasn’t accomplished in more than 20 years. For a player like Gubner, now so steeped in Montana Grizzlies lore, that history sits heavy, adding another layer of importance to the title game. To lay it to rest, they’ll have to vanquish a South Dakota State team that some are saying has a shot to be the greatest FCS team of all time.

Just two out of 27 anonymous head coaches picked the Griz to win against South Dakota State. But for all of his complexities that aren’t visible on paper, all of the hidden layers that require time and effort and knowledge to dig out, this is perhaps the simplest and clearest thing about Alex Gubner: If he’s the underdog, it’s probably worth betting on him.

“You know, I had no idea,” Gubner said. “I started college as a freshman and I had no idea that I’d be able to achieve the things I did with this team. I didn’t imagine this in my wildest dreams. I think I’ve tried to work as hard as I can, as hard as anyone in the building, to achieve these goals. But if you told me at 18 years old, before I came to college, that I was going to be able to be an all-conference player and be able to win the Big Sky championship and go to the national championship, I wouldn’t have believed that.

“All the seniors told me, like Dante (Olson) and all those guys, they tell you it flies so fast and you don’t believe them. And then you get to this point, you’re like, wow, they’re right. Like, I can’t believe that I’m going to be done. … My brothers, you know, my best buds – me and Braxton, Flink, Levi, Riley Wilson, Hank Nuce, Hayden Harris, all my really close friends – we’re playing football and we’re going down to Texas together and we’re going to win this national championship.

“I’ve been in the grind with almost all of them for so many years and it’s cool to see our success and how hard we worked and how it came to fruition.”

Two days after Montana’s 68-56 loss to Weber State in the quarterfinals of last year’s Big Sky Conference tournament, Josh Bannan stepped back on the court at Dahlberg Arena.

It had been a successful sophomore season for Bannan – he boosted his averages from 8.6 points and 5.1 rebounds per game to 15.1 and 8.2 and earned an all-Big Sky second-team selection – with a sour ending.

Going against Weber State star Dillon Jones, he shot 1 of 8 in the quarterfinal game and committed five turnovers as the Griz went one-and-done in Boise.

“It was one of the hardest days in my life,” Bannan said. “I felt like I completely under-performed in that moment, and I took a lot of responsibility for the way that game went. I was very disappointed in the way I played and disappointed in how the season ended.”

He’d spent the day after the Weber State game processing the pain and watching film with Montana’s coaching staff, diagnosing weaknesses.

Now he was ready to start correcting them.

“I couldn’t stay out of the gym because there was just this feeling of emptiness in me,” Bannan said. “I didn’t feel like I could just solve that by taking time off. I had to get back in the gym and there was just a craving to get back after it. … Given the way that it finished, I knew the only thing that could somewhat put my mind at ease was getting back in the gym.”

“To have the maturity and self drive to be able to basically take one day off after the season ended, sit down for hours and watch all your clips, look in-depth at all your statistical data, acknowledge the areas of your game that need improvement and growth, develop a plan for how you’re going to improve in those areas and then dedicate three to four hours in the gym, six days a week, for an entire offseason,” Montana assistant Anderson Clarke said, “that’s a perfect example of his work ethic and dedication to growing his game.”

***

Now a junior, Bannan’s year-round work over the three years he’s been at Montana hasn’t just grown his game – it’s completely transformed it, turning him into one of most unique players in the league and the focal point of a re-made Griz roster.

Once a rugged rebounder and low-post banger, he’s evolved over the last two offseasons, methodically targeting the weak spots in his game and molding himself into a devastatingly versatile new-age power forward who’s capable of bringing the ball up the floor, stepping out to hit 3-pointers or orchestrating the offense from the high post.

The focus of his offseason work is clearly evident in his stats, the residue of summer workouts as distinct a visual signature in his statline as his corkscrewing, low-slung lefty jumper, released a beat after the apex of his jump, is on the court.

After making just 8 of his 34 3-point attempts as a freshman, he spent the summer working on his shot and raised his 3-point percentage by over 10 points as a sophomore.

“I would estimate that from when he came in as a freshman to right now, he’s made somewhere between 500,000 and 600,000 shots,” Clarke said. “That was a huge emphasis.”

Last summer, Bannan and Clarke, along with the rest of the Griz staff, looked at the player he’d become and saw a well-rounded scorer, capable of getting buckets from anywhere on the court – but one who created shots mostly for himself, and who didn’t have any counters to teams focusing most of their defensive attention on him.

“We kind of got the shooting to a point where it was serviceable and he was shooting a good percentage and he was confident in it,” Clarke said. “And I think the passing and the ballhandling and the playmaking was the thing that we tried to add from that sophomore to junior year. … It’s not just, how do I get my own shot? It’s how can I get teammates involved and get them going?”

After averaging 1.6 assists per game a year ago, he jumped to 3.6 this year, fifth in the conference, with an assist to turnover ratio solidly above 1.

According to advanced stats from kenpom.com, he nearly doubled his assist rate – the percentage of his team’s baskets a player assists while on the court – from 12.8% a year ago to 23.2%, and his assist rate of 25.7% in conference games was fourth in the league.

Along with Jones, he was one of two players to finish in the top 11 in the conference in scoring, rebounding and assists, averaging 15.1 points, 8.5 rebounds and 3.6 assists per game on the way to first-team all-conference honors.

“He can stretch you out, he can shoot the 3, but he can also post you up and he can drive on you,” Montana State head coach Danny Sprinkle said. “You have to be aware of him always.”

Against Sprinkle’s Bobcats on February 18, Bannan continually faced up against MSU’s star big Jubrile Belo, beating him to the rim and slapping the glass for layup after layup en route to 25 points.

With smaller defenders on him, he’s a masher with fine footwork and a mean streak, getting to the rim to finish with jump hooks over either shoulder or spinning away to get sneaky twisting reverse layups along the baseline.

He’s hitting 41.3% of his 3-pointers this year, and 77% from the free-throw line.

On Montana’s first four possessions against North Dakota State on December 10, he posted up for a short jump hook, faced up and drove from the 3-point line for a bucket, set a screen that freed Brandon Whitney for a layup, and battled to tap out an offensive rebound that led to another layup by Aanen Moody. A couple possessions later he hit a 3, all in the first five minutes of the game.

“When you couple the talent that he possesses with the size, the versatility, you know, there’s really nothing he can’t do on a basketball court,” Montana associate head coach Chris Cobb said. “He can guard five positions. He can handle the ball and make decisions. He can shoot it. He can score around the rim.”

Every part of that improvement has been crucial for a Montana team that’s rebounded from a 3-6 conference start to win eight out of nine, including Monday’s Big Sky quarterfinal victory over Idaho State.

Although the Griz did a good job integrating new transfers like Dischon Thomas and Aanen Moody to take some of the pressure off his scoring, Bannan has carried the bulk of the responsibility for Montana’s rebounding and playmaking. He’s been the biggest factor keeping the Griz, who like to play three short guards with some combo of Moody, Brandon Whitney, Lonnell Martin Jr. and Josh Vazquez, from being overwhelmed on the boards (Montana has an almost perfectly neutral rebounding margin this year).

On offense, he’s increasingly taken the ball out of Whitney’s hands to serve as the fulcrum of the Griz attack, dribbling into inverted pick and rolls as a 6-foot-9 point guard and cooking up a nice two-man game with Moody, who zooms to the top of the key to take a handoff and can either rise and fire, pitch the ball back to Bannan fading behind the 3-point line or pivot into a more traditional pick and roll with Bannan as the screener.

“His ability to facilitate is huge and the versatility, I think it takes pressure off of Brandon Whitney and allows him to score more,” head coach Travis DeCuire said. “It frees (Whitney) up to move without the ball and be effective in more areas than just handling the rock, and Bannan then also gets to focus on the spots he can score in.”

His 8.5 rebounds per game and 108 total assists were each nearly double the next-closest player on the Griz (Dischon Thomas averaged 4.5 rebounds and Brandon Whitney had 66 assists).

“It’s always been that good things happen when the ball is in his hands, but he’s just more consistent with it now,” Eastern Washington head coach David Riley said. “It’s like every time he gets the ball in scoring position, something good happens for their team. He’s not just left-handed anymore, he can shoot a lot more consistently now. He’s just a heck of a player. And so it shows that he’s working really hard, but also their coaching staff’s process with development is pretty good.”

***

As Bannan and Clarke worked out one morning this season, Dahlberg Arena was so quiet that the few onlookers passing through could hear not only the squeak of Bannan’s sneakers and the crisp, fall-leaf sound of the ball slicing through the net, but also every one of his Serena Williams grunts as he worked through a drop-step drill and the slap of the ball against his hands as he gathered.

The duo worked quickly, efficiently, with brief moments of conference as Bannan pointed out what he wanted to work on next – midrange jumpers off the curl and off the dribble, 3-pointers from all around the arc, spins and counter-spins with either hand in the post.

Clarke, from Tasmania, and Bannan, from Melbourne, have been connected for years through Clarke’s father Marty, one of the most respected figures in Australian basketball who runs the NBA Global Academy at the Australian Institute of Sport.

Australia has a proud and fierce basketball tradition, one that’s represented by the national team, the Boomers (named, Wikipedia mentions, after a slang term for a male kangaroo. This is not relevant, but it is delightful – New Zealand’s national team is nicknamed the Tall Blacks, playing off the country’s famous All Blacks rugby team).

“Playing for Australia has always been my No. 1 goal out of basketball, representing Australia in the Olympic Games,” Bannan said, relegating every American boy’s basketball dream to second on his list. “And then I know, second to that, has been playing in the NBA.”

There are counter-examples (*cough* Ben Simmons), but the quintessential Australian basketball player is an underdog, someone who’s maxed out their limited physical gifts with pure effort – Patty Mills, Matthew Dellavedova or Joe Ingles, all of whom Bannan name-checked (Ingles, actually, is as perfect a comp for Bannan as there is – same receding hairline and unathletic first impression, same unorthodox but effective lefty jump shot, same innate feel for the game that makes all of his other attributes play up).

Mills, in particular, has reached national hero status thanks more to his play for the national team than for his long NBA career as a backup point guard for the Spurs and Nets. Mills, a second-round pick, played at the Idaho Central Arena, home of the Big Sky tournament, with the D-League Idaho Stampede as he tried to catch on with the Trail Blazers, and also played in Australia and China before making the Spurs. After carrying the Australian flag at the opening ceremonies of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, he scored 42 points in the bronze medal game against Luka Doncic’s Slovenia to carry the Boomers to their first-ever medal in international competition, an achievement that cemented him as a national icon on par with Michael Phelps in the U.S. or Mo Farah in Britain.

“I think his work ethic, just from an outsider’s perspective, from what I can see, is incredible,” Bannan said. “The way he plays when he plays for Australia is pretty special. To me, that’s sort of the pinnacle of basketball. And then he’s a really good person off the court too. The way he is, I aspire to be somewhat like that.”

Bannan spent long hours in the gym with his father, Chris – “my dad instilled in me at a young age, if you want something, you have to work at it constantly,” Bannan said – but was a late bloomer and didn’t make his first state team until he was 16 or 17. Shortly after that, he made the national team at his age group and was invited to take a spot at the AIS, which marked him as one of the top players in the country.

The Griz, trying to make inroads into the Australian basketball landscape after hiring Clarke and sending Cobb on a trip down under to scout Bannan and Clarke’s brother Hunter, were the first school to recruit him.

Missoula is over 8,000 miles away from Melbourne, and as Bannan struggled to adjust at first, he found comfort in his workouts, the continuation of a routine that had defined much of his life, from the early years with his dad to his time at AIS, where he squeezed solo time in the gym around mandatory workouts and practices.

“Outside of that team training, it was up to you,” Bannan said. “And I always wanted to outwork everyone else who was there. I try everywhere I go to be the hardest-working guy, because how can I expect to achieve the things I want to achieve if I’m not working harder than everyone else?”

During summers at Montana, Bannan hit the gym at 6 a.m. to work out with Clarke before youth summer camps started at 7. After a full day of coaching kids, he would come back to the court at night to shoot while his girlfriend rebounded for him.

“Shoutout to Hannah,” Clarke said.

When that wasn’t enough, he called his family back in Australia.

“My freshman year was the year off with the COVID year, so it was hard, it was really hard,” Bannan said. “But my mum and dad were just there for me through it all. I’d call and just really be struggling and they’re talking you through it and calming me down.”

Bannan’s mom and dad visited the States for the first time last summer, before his junior year. In January, his mom and sister came back – the first time anyone in his family had ever seen him play for the Griz in person.

In the first game they attended, he scored his 1,000th career point and finished with 12 points, seven rebounds and six assists, but missed a crucial and-1 free throw with 1:12 left before Weber State’s insane steal and 3-pointer at the buzzer let the Wildcats snatch a 59-57 win.

After the game, they waited for a dejected Bannan, as did a small group of media. But as he emerged from the locker room, before doing anything else, he went to the free-throw line at the east end of Dahlberg Arena, grabbed a ball, and shot.

“I find there aren’t many things that I find more enjoyment in than a really hard workout, where you get to the end and there’s just a sense of accomplishment,” Bannan said. “I love working out during the offseason, I love just getting in the gym with Ando (Clarke) and working out, just, like, sweating through my t-shirt. I enjoy that feeling. And I love seeing the progress, I love feeling like I’m improving, and then seeing the benefits when I get to play.”

Jones’ brother, Eric Washington, was in the midst of chasing his professional basketball aspirations. The Miami (Ohio) alum has spent close to a decade playing overseas, mainly in Germany. When Washington didn’t have a trainer one summer, he put his little brother to work as his rebounder.

“We would go shoot twice a day, every single day,” said Jones, these days an incomparable junior for Weber State’s men’s basketball team.

“I was just little brother in the gym and he needed me to rebound. He had me rebounding and passing to him and that whole summer, I didn’t know I was getting better at rebounding,” Jones said. “But I learned, when he missed, I didn’t want to run across the whole gym. You want to conserve energy. And rebounding, you want to conserve time, energy, space.”

Unconsciously, Jones learned how to be efficient in his movement, his angles, his pursuit. It’s what has turned him into arguably the most prolific defensive rebounder in all of college basketball.

“It’s honestly in the reps,” Jones said following his team’s miraculous 59-57 win over Montana in Missoula, a game that saw the Weber standout snare 21 defensive rebounds. “I actually credit my brother and any of the other guys I’ve rebounded for at Weber.”

The 6-foot-6, 235-pound Jones is a truly unique player in college basketball. He leads the country in defensive rebounds per game. He is one of two players in America averaging at least 16 points and 11 rebounds per contest. He’s Kevin Love on the defensive boards, but offensively, he channels his inner Draymond Green, playing on the ball more often than not in both Weber’s extended fast break sets and in the half court.

“He’s leading the nation in defensive rebounding,” said Montana State head coach Danny Sprinkle, who’s had some knock down, drag outs with Weber State over the last two seasons in no small part because of Jones’ prowess. “Not the Big Sky. The nation. And he’s such a mismatch for a point guard but he’s 6-foot-6, 230 pounds and he can really get the ball downhill. He causes a lot of problems. He’s a very hard matchup to guard and he makes everyone around him better.”

Jones can take over a game in a variety of ways. In Missoula in early January, he decided to play the role of facilitator, passing to his teammates and moving the ball fluidly. As often happens, the ball found its way back to Jones, who drilled five 3-pointers on the way to 17 points.

“He’s one of the best players in the league, no question, and he has been,” said Montana head coach Travis DeCuire.

Following last season, Randy Rahe retired after one of the most successful head coaching stints in Big Sky Conference history. He led Weber State for 16 seasons, piling up a Big Sky record 316 wins (198 in conference) and winning four conference coach of the year honors.

In Eric Duft’s first season, Weber State and the Big Sky has seen an inordinate amount of close contests. The conference had almost 30 games come down to the final possession. WSU finished 12-6 in league play, alone in third place, because Jones quite literally won the Wildcats the game at the buzzer on multiple occasions.

His layup as the clock wound down lifted WSU to a 50-48 win over Sacramento State in Ogden. In the rematch, Jones converted a 3-point play in the waning seconds to boost the Wildcats to a 52-49 win. His layup at the buzzer secured a 72-71 double overtime win at Idaho State. And his 3-point play with 18 seconds left in overtime proved pivotal in WSU’s 90-89 OT victory over NAU in the final game of the regular season.

“He sure helps as a coach,” said Duft, who has 17 wins entering his first Big Sky Tournament. “Dillon takes care of a lot of problems. He is an all-around great player. He’s a tremendous defensive rebounder. He is the No. 1 in the country in defensive rebounding percentage. He’s a tremendous passer and play-maker for us. He’s really improved his shooting over the years and he’s a guy who’s totally committed to being a good player.”

Although Jones led the league in rebounding by more than two boards a game, ranked eighth in the league in scoring, shot the fourth-highest field goal percentage and led a team with a first-year head coach and a new look roster to a third-place finish, the brick-house alpha did not earn Big Sky Conference Player of the Year honors.

The snub set Twitter ablaze. But it might also motivate Jones and the Wildcats.

Weber State plays sixth-seeded Sacramento State on Monday at 8 p.m.

“He’s a high major player,” Sprinkle said. “There’s no question. He could play anywhere in the country on any team in the country. He’s going to be a pro and he’s going to make a lot of money playing basketball for a long time because he continues to get better. He’s got an edge to him, toughness and a chip on his shoulder.”

This year, Montana honored the legendary coach late in the season by naming the floor at Dahlberg after him in a weekend of ceremony that included 60-plus Lady Griz alumni lining up on the court to pay homage.

“I don’t know that there’s many schools in the nation that have an alumni network like the Lady Griz do,” senior forward Carmen Gfeller said. “When you come into Dahlberg to celebrate a coach who obviously has banners hung and is a legend, and you have 300-plus women of all ages, all walks of life there to support him, it’s so cool.”

But the only thing stronger than memory is the passage of time, and with each year, the threads connecting the program to that past become more and more frayed. It’s now been eight years since the Lady Griz won a Big Sky trophy, when Selvig’s penultimate team swept the regular season and tournament in 2014-15.

Brian Holsinger, the third head coach to take the reins at Montana since Selvig’s retirement, has elevated the importance of Montana’s history under Selvig all season, even as he tries to bring the program into a new era.

“One of the main reasons I wanted to come here was because it’s a unique history,” Holsinger said. “It’s just different. You have a Hall of Fame coach who created something so unique and special with these fans and with the program. That’s why I’ve worked really hard to stay connected with that because it just doesn’t happen everywhere.”

With each year that passes since Selvig retired after an unbelievable 865 victories, though, that legacy gets farther and farther away. Lady Griz who played under Selvig talk about the chain, built stronger by each successive class of players, that stretches all the way back to the beginning, wrapping anyone who touched the program into a family. As the Lady Griz struggled to settle on a succession plan after Selvig, going from his former star Shannon Schweyen to a one-year bridge with Mike Petrino to an outsider in Holsinger, those connections became harder to make. Links in the chain started disappearing.

There are no players left in the program who intersected with anyone who played on the 2014-15 championship team, and only two who played with anyone who was on the team in 2015-16, Selvig’s final year coaching.

And given Sammy Fatkin’s jagged career trajectory – starting at Arizona only to transfer to Montana as a sophomore, sitting out the entire 2020-21 season only to come back to the team for her final two years of eligibility – the one player who now carries that legacy on her shoulders, the Lady Griz’s strongest link back to the past, is Gfeller, the fifth-year senior from Colfax, Washington.

“I just really want to reiterate how much gratitude I have for this university and the Lady Griz basketball program. I’m just so appreciative of the hard things that I’ve been through, and like I said, I’ve come out with really, really great friendships and just learned so much about myself,” Gfeller said. “I wouldn’t want to go through challenges without having Montana across my chest, and I’m just really proud to be a Lady Griz.”

***

For someone who’s been the most stable thing about the last era of Lady Griz basketball, it’s ironic that Gfeller very nearly didn’t play hoops in college at all.

She was originally a volleyball player and a good enough one, even as a freshman, to convince Colfax’s legendary volleyball coach, Sue Doering, to push off her retirement for four years.

“One of the things I prayed about was when I was going to leave coaching,” Doering said. “I had prayed, OK, Lord, if you want me to stay, then Carmen is going to come up to me and say, Coach, I really want to play volleyball in college and if she does that, then I would stay until she graduates. … Anyway, the next day as I was walking across the gym, Carmen comes up and goes, Coach, I’m so excited. I think I really want to play volleyball in college.”

With Gfeller growing to 6-foot-1 with plenty of athleticism, Doering has plenty of other stories about her volleyball career, including the time she had 37 kills in the state championship game as a freshman. In a small town like Colfax, though, great athletes play every sport (in addition to volleyball and basketball, Gfeller made it to the state finals in the 100 hurdles as a senior).

“Super athletic, you know, just like any coach would wish for,” said Doering, who won 13 state titles in 29 years at Colfax. “Coachable, positive, hard worker, good leader. She came to practice every day with a great attitude.”

Gfeller had a connection to basketball and to Montana though her brother, Brandon, who scored 756 points over a four-year Griz career and was a four-time academic all-Big Sky selection and won the Grizzly Cup (“given to an overall student-athlete who represents the Grizzlies in class, the community and competition”) as a senior.

After winning state titles in both volleyball and basketball as a senior, Carmen followed in his footsteps, turning down offers to walk on to at least one Pac-12 school, and becoming the one who got away for at least one other Big Sky coach.

“I’ve loved Carmen’s game since the beginning,” Idaho coach Jon Newlee said. “I’m not very smart. I didn’t do a very good job of recruiting her out of high school, as local as she was. She came out at the same time as Beyonce (Bea) did and I thought we only needed that at one spot.”

It took a couple years to see the source of Newlee’s regret. After playing in 27 games as a freshman (when she played with Jace Henderson and McKenzie Johnston, who were both on Selvig’s final team), Gfeller redshirted her sophomore year.

The next year, in 2020-21, three things happened. First, Petrino, who’d been an assistant for the prior four years, took over for Schweyen as the head coach, Montana’s second coaching change in four years after not going through one for the prior 38. The Lady Griz lost their last player who’d played under Selvig when Johnston exhausted her eligibility (although the connections remained – Henderson and Jordan Sullivan were both assistant coaches). And Gfeller emerged from her redshirt season a completely different player, averaging 14.3 points per game, sixth in the conference, on 53/35/88 shooting splits, plus 5.4 rebounds.

That’s the player she’s been since – a lethally efficient three-level scorer who’s equally as comfortable behind the 3-point line as she is underneath the basket.

She can relocate anywhere on the 3-point line after setting a screen, hopping into her shot and holding her high follow-through, even resetting her feet if needed for a stepback or to avoid a contest. She’s hitting 36.7% of her 3s for her career, and 39.2% after her freshman year.

That threat scrambles defenses and opens up her interior game off the roll. When she catches at the high post, she shows defenders just enough of the ball on a pump fake to get them off-balance and burrow into the lane, putting her shoulder into opponents to open up tough finishes through contact at the rim with either hand. She’s also shot over 80% from the free-throw line each of the last three years.

“I think she’s really expanded her game,” Newlee said. “She shoots the 3, she’s a tough kid inside, can really defend, tough physical rebounder, plays hard. … I think she’s a great player and has really done a great job of making herself great through the years.”

As a redshirt junior last year, Gfeller carried the Lady Griz to the best win of Holsinger’s career so far, scoring 34 points on 11 of 16 shooting to lead Montana to a shocking 71-57 win over a Montana State team that went to the NCAA Tournament. It was the second-most points ever scored by a Lady Griz player against Montana State, and she did it to snap a seven-game losing streak in a rivalry that Selvig once dominated against the Bobcats.

“She’s just so skilled,” Holsinger said. “Somebody has taught her along the way how to use her pivots, how to use fakes, and then she just has a really, really nice shot.”

***

As her game developed on the court, Gfeller has become the bridge between Montana’s past and future. She’s the first Lady Griz star to play her full career post-Selvig – and maybe the last to have any connections to that era.

That’s never been more apparent than in this season of transition. Besides Fatkin and Gfeller, the only other upperclassmen on the roster are Gina Marxen, who was a multiple-time all-conference point guard running Idaho’s full-sprint offense before taking a year off and then transferring to Montana, and Katerina Tsineke, a pesky defensive guard from Greece who transferred over from East Carolina before Holsinger’s first year.

All year, Holsinger has been trying to reconcile those four with the timeline of the talented youngsters he’s brought in.

Freshman point guard Mack Konig, a top-100 national recruit out of Ontario, has increasingly pushed Marxen – again, a multiple-time all-conference string-puller – off the ball and into a spot-up only role. Konig won the conference’s Freshman of the Year award.

Another rookie, Libby Stump, plays so well at times that letting her go iso looks like Montana’s best offense – and other times threatens to shoot the Lady Griz out of games.

Helena’s Dani Bartsch, now a sophomore, has matured from a wildly athletic string bean into a wildly athletic string bean who’s a candidate for Defensive Player of the Year and single-handedly holds down the first line of Montana’s occasionally devastating 1-2-2 press, unfurling her condor arms to tip inbounds passes.

They’re a group that has the talent and potential to redeem the muddled mess of the last few years and clearly outline the next era of Lady Griz basketball.

Holsinger has made it clear that to achieve that potential, he thinks they need to keep a link to the last era.

Just as much as the coach, it’s been Gfeller’s responsibility, both on and off the court, to be that link.

“I’ve always been somebody who kind of likes to lead by example. That’s been more comfortable for me,” Gfeller said. “But in the game, I’m on the bench and the coaches are huddling, and Brian will say, Carmen, go get the team fired up. I’m just like, I don’t even know what to say. But he’s definitely held me accountable for that.”

“That, for her, has been a challenge,” Holsinger said. “She’s like, well, I feel like I can’t say anything when I don’t play my best. And I’m like, that’s not true. You’re already respected and you can say things.”

It’s also a responsibility that sits heavily. After a 76-74 loss to Northern Arizona in Missoula early in the conference season, Gfeller lingered on the court after the game in a tight knot with family, clearly emotional.

“I think emotion is good,” Gfeller said. “I know the team knows that I care, but having that visual aspect to it, I mean, it’s not for theatrics. It was genuine. When you’re a fifth-year senior, and you’re losing close games like that, especially ones that you know that you can win, it’s gonna hurt a little bit. But I hope that at the end of the day, it’s just inspiring and encouraging, and people see how much I care.”

Gfeller had plenty of reasons to pass on that burden. Growing up in Colfax, she didn’t dream of playing for the Lady Griz like so many girls who grew up in Montana and played for Selvig. How many other players would have transferred when on their third coaching staff in four years?

But instead of leaving, Gfeller has embraced the challenges and responsibilities that come with her history-soaked program. She recently announced that she would return for her extra COVID year of eligibility.

“I think every player probably goes through that what-if process,” Gfeller said, “and I did too. But I just remember thinking, anything that I would want anywhere else I already have. I already have great coaches. I already have great teammates, a great strength program, a crazy crowd every Thursday and Saturday night. I already had what I wanted. I don’t really see any reason to change that.”

It’s still unclear what the future will hold for the Lady Griz. What is clear is that future will owe a lot to a young woman who thought she would play volleyball in college instead.

“(The alumni) truly want nothing but the best for the current players, and they make sure that we know that,” Gfeller said. “For them to have that impact on the current players, that’s something that I aspire for. When I’m an alum, I just want people who are part of the Lady Griz to realize how loved they are, and how lucky they are to be a part of something so much bigger than basketball. … That’s something that Brian is really passionate about building, and I’m just really grateful that I have a small part in the grand scheme of things.”

Payne was a decorated point guard herself, first at Havre High School on the Hi-Line of Montana and then at Washington, where she was a two-time first-team all-Pac 10 selection and set the school record for 3-pointers in a career.

“I’m looking for someone who’s really an extension of our coaching staff, someone with great communication skills, someone with leadership skills that can run a team,” Payne said. “High basketball IQ is really important, because as a point guard you have to make sure that you know your position like everyone else’s position, and how to put your teammates in the best position to score within the system.”

Great point guard play has been a constant of Payne’s grinding six-year journey to take the Lumberjacks to the top of the Big Sky Conference.

In 2017-18, Payne’s first year, former Loyola Marymount transfer Olivia Lucero finished seventh in the conference in scoring with 17.4 points per game and third with 4.6 assists. Two years later, Caitlin Malvar was also third with 4.6 assists per game and an assist to turnover ratio of over 2.0, part of a great class of point guards in the league that year (Gina Marxen, McKenzie Johnston and Kylie Jimenez were also over 2, and lower down on the list were Jessica McDowell-White, Rebecca Cardenas, Oliana Squires, Dora Goles and a young Darian White).

Payne had long had an idea that Regan Schenck might be the next in that line.

“She came from a smaller school up in the Seattle area (Woodinville, Washington), so I’ve been watching her since she was young,” Payne said. “As soon as I got the job down here, I knew she was one that we really wanted to go after.”

Schenck got to Flagstaff just one year after Payne, and just like the program, her rise has been gradual. She sat behind Malvar for a few years as Payne pushed the Lumberjacks back to .500, then narrowly over it.

But now, five years into Schenck’s career, player and program are peaking at the same time. Behind Schenck’s full-send energy and complete control of Payne’s up-tempo style, the Lumberjacks won a share of the regular season conference title for the first time since 1997-98. A year after losing to Montana State in the title game, they’ll enter the conference tournament, which starts Saturday in Boise, as the No. 1 overall seed.

“I knew that she was going to be a potential program changer,” Payne said. “And that was part of the conversation when we were recruiting her. You could come in here and leave a major impact on this program and completely help turn it around, and that’s obviously what she did.”

***

For whatever else she is, Schenck might be the most exhausting player to watch in the league. Always in motion, she bounces on her toes, tensely poised and muscled, radiating nervous energy like a thoroughbred stuck in the starting gate. At 34 minutes per game, if you could make a training DVD of her conditioning routine, it would sell a million copies.

She sprints the ball up the floor even against set defenses, head up, back straight and ponytail swinging, always looking for hit-ahead passes to press the pace even more.

“She is definitely their little engine that gets them going,” Idaho State head coach Seton Sobolewski said. “That’s one thing that hurt us in Pocatello was their pace, and she’s the one that drives it. She’s in really good shape, that kid. She’s built, she’s strong. She’s got muscles everywhere. She can just run all day and night.”

That’s exactly the way that Payne wants it. The Lumberjacks play at the fastest pace in the league and one of the 25 fastest in the country, a quantum echo of the Seven Seconds Or Less Phoenix Suns just 150 miles up I-17 in Flagstaff.

NAU had the worst defense in the conference at 72.4 points per game given up…but was equally as far out in front of the field on offense with 75.8 points per game, first in the league by an astronomical margin (Montana, in second place at 70.5 PPG, was much closer to sixth-place Montana State than they were to the Lumberjacks) and still good for a comfortably positive point differential.

“We want to run an up-tempo system, and you have to have players that can get up and down the court to be able to do that,” Payne said. “So she’s been a huge piece to be the catalyst of our offense.”

To complement Schenck, Payne has built a roster around her that fits perfectly into her strengths. The Morans, Olivia and Nyah, are twins from Riverside, California, with a streetball spirit who are always down to run. Emily Rodabaugh and Montana Oltrogge are conscience-less shooters who can flare out to the corners on the fast break or hoist off shoveled kick-back passes in semi-transition (Oltrogge, NAU’s leading scorer, appears to be ready to play in the conference tournament, albeit on reduced minutes, after a scary-looking knee injury suffered against her old team, Idaho State, in early February). Even the starting center, Fatoumata Jaiteh, is one of the most athletic posts in the league, willing and able to run the floor.

In the half-court, Schenck still speeds up the game, skipping passes across the court, bouncing back to the top of the key to reset and then darting into the lane to scramble the defense before tossing wild kickouts back to shooters on the perimeter.

Schenck is at the center of it all. For the second time in the last three years, she’s leading the conference in assists, boosting her average from 5.9 per game last year to 6.8.

“Ever since I was young, I always loved the up and down, transition style of basketball,” Schenck said. “It’s really nice having the twins, they’re doing great things out there. Montana is a big guard that can run and all our posts are athletic.”

***

NAU closed the regular season with a flourish, winning four straight and six out of seven to chase down Montana State and end in a tie with the Bobcats and Sacramento State. The Lumberjacks took the No. 1 seed thanks to sweeps over both those teams.

It’s the latest step in an evolution that’s progressed slowly in six years under Payne. Reaching the title game last year was the biggest progress they’ve made so far. This year’s team has a chance to take the path even further.

“I knew when I came in here, I couldn’t have a championship standard immediately with kids who had no idea how to win,” Payne said after losing to Montana State in that game. “So we slowly had to progress and really continue to up the bar, and they continued to fight for it, they continued to work hard.”

Schenck’s own development has been a microcosm of that climb. To reach back for a metaphor, even the best ingredients in the world don’t turn into a gourmet dish on their own. Payne has mentioned that the hardest thing she had to teach the young point guard is how to play slowly. When she arrived five years ago, Schenck had all the tools. What she didn’t have was balance, and feel – the ability to toggle between fast and slow, between looking for own shot or creating for others.

This year, she’s in complete control, fully in tune with a team that’s synced up to her own frantic rhythms.

She had 18 points, 13 assists and six rebounds in the season opener against Arizona State; 25, seven and seven as the Lumberjacks came back from down 15 in the fourth quarter at UC Davis (“She just took over, you know, pull up off the ball screen, making defensive plays,” Sobolewski said); 18, 11 and six against Montana State’s DPOY candidate Darian White. After an inexplicable step back in her shooting percentages last year – “I would love to know (what happened),” Payne said deadpan – she’s back above 40% from 3-point range this year on some of the highest volume of her career.

“Last year, we didn’t guard her at the 3-point line, and this year you had to guard her, so that tells you about her work ethic, right?” Montana head coach Brian Holsinger said. “She turned herself into a shooter that you had to guard. … Yeah, geez, I was so impressed. They lose Montana Oltrogge and they still continue to win, that’s not easy. And she’s getting assists, she rebounds. She just does so much.”

Northern Arizona opens the Big Sky tournament on Sunday at noon against the winner of Saturday’s game between No. 9 Northern Colorado and No. 10 Weber State.

As Holland stood atop the airplane stairs and looked out onto the runway, the throngs of locals waiting to welcome the Bobcats home burst into an ovation.

“I can still see it right now, 40 years later, that exact moment,” Bert Markovich said earlier this week. “That’s the defining memory of that moment, one of the pinnacle moments in all our lives.”

Forty years ago, Holland reached the pinnacle as a coach, replicating a feat he achieved 20 years earlier as a player. With each anniversary, each decade that passes, Bobcats’ run to the 1976 national championship becomes more entrenched in the lore of the Gallatin Valley. As Holland walked off the plane holding the national championship trophy, Mr. Bobcat stood on top of the world.

“The people in Montana like my father who never went to college, they loved Sonny Holland,” Markovich said. “The people of Montana, they loved him because of what he represented with his humility and authenticity. The professors, the farmers, the ranchers, the Butte miners, everyone loved him because he was so sincere. Then you add in the winning and you add in that championship and he is the greatest Bobcat of them all.”

As a four-year starter and three-time All-American, Holland carved out a career as a Bobcat legend, leading Montana State to its first football national championship in 1956. By 1976, he was in his sixth of seven seasons as the most successful head coach in school history, leading MSU to its second national title. But entering the campaign, no one could’ve predicted the success MSU would experience.

Holland led the Bobcats to the Big Sky Conference championship in 1972 in his second season as stars like Bill Kollar and Sam McCullum carved out their own places in MSU history. In 1973, 1974 and 1975, the Bobcats were one of the fiercest defensive units in all of Division II. Linebackers like Dusty Birkenbuel and Ron Ueland and defensive linemen like Kollar and Brad Daws stonewalled opponents with their vaunted 4-4 defense. Holland’s toss sweep offense featuring stud ball carriers like Steve Kracher and Wayne Edwards helped the Bobcats grind teams into the ground.

But MSU always battled new Big Sky member Boise State. Between 1973 and 1975, the Broncos — a former junior college accepted into the NCAA in 1969 — used Tony Knap’s innovative pro-style offense to pile up 29 wins in three seasons, earning Big Sky titles all three years. The Bobcats were the Big Sky runners-up to BSU in 1973 and 1974.

In 1975, Kracher rushed for 218 yards and helped MSU to a 34-28 lead with 37 seconds to play in Boise. On a sweep play, Boise State linebacker Gary Rosolowich stripped Kracher as the Bobcat runner was on his way out of bounds. The Broncos recovered and scored seconds later to lift BSU to a 35-34 victory that dropped MSU top 1-4 and sparked the host’s run to a third straight BSC title.

“We could’ve sacked our bats after that heartbreaker at the gun,” said Daws, an All-American his senior season in 1975. “But we won our next four that year, which gave those guys momentum heading into ’76.”

Still, with the departure of so many great players, from Kracher to all-time leading scorer kicker Pat Bolton to quarterback Mike Holder to a whole collection of physically intimidating defensive players, expectations were tempered entering 1976. The Bobcats were picked to finish fourth in the seven-team Big Sky Conference.

The roster featured just 10 seniors, including four fifth-year players like Marcovich and linebacker Tim Nixon, the team’s captains. Les Leininger returned at defensive end to anchor the defensive line, Vince Dodd returned in the secondary to lead the way from his strong safety position and senior Dave Mueller returned to flank Nixon. Senior Don Ueland provided a senior presence in an offensive backfield otherwise staked with first-year starters at quarterback, running back and fullback.

“You really had this dynamic that the talent, the really best players were sophomores and juniors,” Markovich said. “You had these seniors who played behind these tremendous stars, Bill Kollar, Ron Ueland, Dusty Birkenbuel, Wayne Edwards, Brad Daws. You had this mindset of just happy to be there because of the greatness ahead of us. There was no ego on that team.”

“The big thing was we had great senior leadership,” Rick Vancleeve, an All-Big Sky sophomore defensive tackle on the 1976 team, said. “I don’t think a lot of those guys got all-conference or anything but they were the heart of the team. We returned many players off that team the next two years and never quite ended up in the same position. That was a perfect meld of senior leadership and young punks.”

The Bobcat offensive front featured future NFL talent Jon Bortchardt, a 6-foot-5, 220-pound sophomore, and Bob Lubig, a 6-foot-5, 225-pound junior starting at tackle, the 6-foot-2, 225-pound Markovich playing center, and junior Lee Washburn (6-6, 248) and senior Ken Verlanic (6-3, 234) starting at guard. Junior Ron McCullogh (6-3, 223) was the top team in the Big Sky that season.

The group was tasked with paving the way for Holland’s physical toss sweep offense. Paul Dennehy, a sophomore from Butte Central, had just one season of starting experience as a quarterback for the Maroons because he sat behind record-setting Mark Schulte until his senior year. Dennehy’s athleticism running the option and the quarterback sprint out coupled with Delmar Jones’ athleticism from the fullback spot and Tom Kostrba’s grit at tailback helped the Bobcats establish their identity and punish teams throughout the ’76 season. The Bobcats rushed for nearly 290 yards per outing.

“The key to our championship run was our offensive front,” Dennehy said. “Our offensive front was rock solid. Our running game set the tone for everything we did. I think most people would agree, including Coach Holland, that was the best offensive line in Montana State history.”

The roster contained a distinct number of personalities hailing from all over the West. The Bobcats had 37 Treasure State products on their roster, including nine from Butte, Holland’s hometown. The out of state players mostly hailed from regional cities like Spokane, Seattle and the Twin Cities in Minnesota.

“The best way to describe our team was we had a third of out of state guys, a third of in-state guys and a third Butte guys,” Vancleeve said. “Butte is their own state. And our coaching staff were all Butte, all Butte tough.”

The Bobcats set the tone for their powerful style and resilient attitude right away. Montana State began its season in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

“Every time we went over there to Grand Forks, it would be 85 degrees, humidity like crazy and the wind would be blowing hard,” Markovich said. “They’d win the toss, defer, kick it off to you, you’d go three-and-out, punt it into the wind and they would get the ball on your 40-yard line. They would do that all first quarter, you’d be down 21-0 and it would be over before it began.”

The same scenario played out in the opener. In his first career start, Dennehy struggled to settle in initially and the Bobcats fell behind 14-3. Holland’s staff included Don Christensen, Howard Ross, Cliff Hysell and Sonny Lubick, the latter two future Bobcat head coaches themselves. Each and every one of the coaches talked to Dennehy, galvanizing him to guide the Bobcat offense to 15 unanswered points.

“That was the day Paul grew up as a player and we all believed in him after that,” Markovich said.

On the other side, Montana State’s revamped defense — now running a 5-2 instead of the old 4-4 — smothered the Fighting Sioux in MSU’s 18-14 win. With Vancleeve and junior Dick Lyman, a pair of 250-pound Great Falls products, controlling the interior, Leininger making plays on the end, and Dodd, Jim Mickelson and Ron Muri roaming the back end, the Bobcats ended up giving up 10 points per game the rest of the season.

Following the UND win, in Bozeman, Montana State bludgeoned North Dakota State with its powerful rushing attack in a 34-7 win. Against former head coach Jim Sweeney in Fresno, the Bobcats incurred their first loss, 24-10.

Vancleeve recalls the Fresno State loss being the only one of MSU’s 13 that season in which the Bobcats did not say a prayer. The team never missed another pre-game invocation.Following the defeat, the coaches switched Jones, a talented 200-pound sophomore who would earn All-Big Sky honors in 1977, to fullback to provide a speed option to compliment Kostrba’s power. With conference play beginning, Markovich remembers the coaches using a platoon where backups played every third series on both lines, in the backfield and throughout the second two levels of the defense.

October began with “the test, the team to beat in the Big Sky for the entire 70s,” Dennehy said: Boise State. The Bobcats avenged their heartbreaking loss from the season before, winning 24-20. Confidence began to grow.

Montana State destroyed Weber State 44-0 in Ogden before beating Idaho State 28-7 and Idaho 29-14 at Reno H. Sales Stadium in Bozeman. MSU closed the month with a 21-12 over rival Montana in Missoula, Holland’s ninth in 10 career outings against the Griz. November began with a 33-0 win over Northern Arizona in Bozeman to sew up MSU’s sixth Big Sky title in the league’s 14 years of existence.

The highlight of the Big Sky clincher came Leininger thwarted an NAU drive late in the first half by intercepting a pass and running it the length of the field for a touchdown.

“Les ran about a 5.5 40 and somehow went 85 yards into the end zone,” Vancleeve remembers. “On that play, Hysell was running down the sideline step for step with him and I think Hysell had to jog because he’s way faster than Les. Hysell had the head set on and when Les broke clean, Cliff’s cord got caught around his neck and his feet got pulled right out from under him (laughs).”

Montana State went into its regular-season finale at Division I-A Hawaii with the No. 1 national D-II ranking. Markovich joked the trip marked the first time “ a bunch of us Montana cowboys had ever seen any sun on our legs.” Senior tight end Al Reichow tore up his knee earlier in the year and Holland told him he could not go on the trip unless he intended to play. So the Bobcats rallied a collection of money and bought Reichow a ticket to come along to island paradise.

“That’s the kind of team we had,” Holland said during the unveiling ceremony for a statue of his likeness revealed at Bobcat Stadium on on the eve of MSU’s 2016 Homecoming game. “They loved each other, cared for each other and did whatever we took.

“Plus, the reason they bought him a ticket on the plane is Al had a bachelor party planned on the beach.”

MSU won that one too, rolling to a 28-7 win in Hawaii to move to 9-1 and earn a bid to the playoffs, the school’s sixth postseason berth. On the trip home, the plane had to make several emergency landings due to engine troubles, the first in a season filled with travel issues. Any time the Bobcats encountered an issue at the airport, Holland would take the team back to Brick Breeden Fieldhouse and conduct a practice.

“We would laugh about it and make fun of whoever got the most afraid,” Vancleeve said. “But maybe the games were easier because all we really worried about was getting there and getting back. Once we got to the field, we knew we would win.”

The playoffs began on a crisp, frigid Bozeman afternoon on November 27 against New Hampshire. The Bobcats bolted out to a 17-0 lead over the Wildcats.

“When I woke up that morning, it was nine below,” Dennehy said. “I remember going in at halftime and going back out, wondering if it was even possible to warm back up.”

“That was the coldest football game I’d ever played in in my life,” Markovich, a Butte native himself, said. “My wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, came down and she spent the whole game in the bathroom it was so cold.”

New Hampshire stormed back to cut the Bobcat lead to one but a missed extra point gave MSU a 17-16 win and a bid to the Grantland Rice Bowl for a rematch with NDSU, this time in Fargo. That afternoon proved to be as chilling and NDSU’s Astroturf complicated things even further.

“The coaches decided we needed to get new turf shoes so we got some new shoes from this funny new company called Nike none of us had ever heart of,” Markovich said, who ended up wearing Hysell’s coaching shoes instead.

“We got those shoes and ran on to the field and we weren’t used to it, first time on turf, on national TV, some of us fell right on our face,” Vancleeve said.

The Bobcats scored 10 second-half points, all by freshmen, including a key field goal by Jeff Muri in a stiff wind, to advance to the Division II national championship game with a 10-3 win. Kostrba carried MSU with 32 carries for 106 yards as the ‘Cats survived a minus-21 degree freeze.

“We thought we were into the championship, going to Texas, we’d have some good weather,” Dennehy said. “We get to Wichita Falls and it was even colder. The coaches that night went out looking for sweatshirts and long johns because we didn’t pack for it.”

On the way to the title game on December 11, the Montana State again encountered travel issues and again returned to campus to practice. MSU arrived in Wichita Falls late for the welcoming banquet.

The week leading up to the game, the Bobcats heard all about how big, strong, fast and athletic Akron would be. The Zips, after all, were on their way up to Division I two years later and the fertile Ohio recruiting grounds sprinkled talent across their roster.

When Montana State arrived at the banquet hall dressed exactly like you’d expect a group of young men from Montana to be, Akron had already finished eating. But the Zips waited for the Bobcats with other intentions.

“They were cat calling us, making fun of our Montana cowboys,” Holland said. “We had some big ole’ cowboys. Lee Washburn, a big, strong kid from Bozeman, he was pissed off. Our kids were really quiet, didn’t say a thing , but we didn’t forget that. Then we went out and kicked their ass.”

After slugging out the first quarter, Dennehy tossed a five-yard touchdown to McCullough for MSU’s first score. Later in the second quarter, Ueland threw a touchdown to sophomore Butch Damberger on a halfback passes. Ueland, Kostrba and Jones helped MSU piled up 266 rushing yards and Jeff Muri hit a 21-yard field goal as MSU build a 17-0 third-quarter lead.

Akron forced two turnovers that led to 13 quick points and a third takeaway gave Akron one last chance. But the Bobcat defense stiffened and Kostrba punched in a touchdown from eight yards out to seal victory.After Kostrba’s score, he handed the ball to Washburn, who spiked the ball and took the penalty, a completely uncharacteristic display of showboating for a Holland-coached team.

“The most shocked people in the stadium were me and the coaches,” Holland said. “We just didn’t do that stuff. But looking back on it now, it was pretty funny.”

After the game, a sideline reporter for the nationally televised broadcast grabbed Leininger for an interview. The reporter asked how the Westby native’s eight-man football background helped him prepare him for that moment.

“Well,” Leininger replied, “they give you the ball and you run your ass off.”

Following the 1977 season, Holland abruptly retired at the age of 39. Although Sonny Lubick, Doug Graber and Dave Arnold all led MSU to Big Sky titles — Arnold winning a national championship in his second of four seasons in 1984 — the Bobcats have searched to regain the dominance of the Holland era.

 As the ’76 championship fades farther into the past, the reverence for the group grows. On Saturday, Montana State honors the 40^th anniversary of the title at its Homecoming game that doubles as its Big Sky opener against, fittingly, North Dakota. MSU will also honor the 60^th anniversary of the ’56 title team.

Dozens of former Holland players, from the 1976 team and other squads included, attended the unveiling ceremony to see the two-ton bronze memorial of their mentor. Vancleeve, Ueland, Markovich, Dennehy, Jones, Daws and Wayne Edwards spearheaded the construction of the statue.

Markovich emceed the event with Holland receiving praise from all who attended. While Holland is now immortalized forever by the bronze and is widely recognized as the pinnacle figure in the history of Bobcat athletics, the men who went to war for him some 40 years ago have brought him as much pride as anything he accomplished individually.

“That’s really the most spectacular part is to stand back and observe the men they’ve become, the way they’ve raise their families,” Holland said. “They are recognized and remembered as great players but they’ve also been great contributors to the communities they live in around the state and around America. I’m so proud of them all.”

Photos courtesy of Montana State Athletics or noted. All Rights Reserved. 

One of Idaho’s best gimmicks is running tight formations to isolate its top receiver, and with three minutes, 44 seconds left in the second quarter of the Vandals’ game against Eastern Washington at the Kibbie Dome earlier this month, it was Demetrious Crosby Jr.’s turn to line up across from Hatten, all alone on the left side of the field. Just as the announcer was reminding viewers to watch out for Hatten, he burst off the line, eating up Crosby’s 8-yard cushion.

Idaho freshman quarterback Gevani McCoy let go of the ball before Hatten even made the second break of his out-and-up route, and by the time the camera caught back up to the play, he’d high-pointed the ball in the back corner of the end zone with Crosby sprawling to the ground in an ineffective effort to stop the inevitability.

It was Hatten’s 12th touchdown in his last five games, seventh in the last four quarters he’d played and fourth in that game alone. And as he bounced back to his feet, he held up two fingers on each hand, smashed them together and held up the result: four fingers, four touchdowns.

“You’ve got to be careful not to get flagged, right? You don’t want to draw the refs’ attention too much,” Hatten said. “So you have to do it in little subtle ways, but yeah, we work hard all year to get to perform on a big stage and so when you excel at it, I don’t see any problem in soaking it in.”

Hatten hasn’t just been the most unguardable receiver in the country for the last two months. Cool, confident and, more than anything, fun, he’s also the perfect avatar for an Idaho team that’s found its mojo in head coach Jason Eck’s first year.

He added two more touchdowns in a 13-catch, 126-yard effort despite a disappointing loss to UC Davis the week after the Eastern Washington game. At the end of the regular season (Idaho is one of five Big Sky Conference teams going to the FCS playoffs), Hatten leads the conference in catches (74), yards per game (100 – only three other players are even above 80, including his teammate Jermaine Jackson in second place at 85.3) and, obviously, touchdowns (15 after having none in his first three games). Only Weber State’s Ty MacPherson reached double digits with 10 TDs.

Montana fans found out just how good he is a month ago, when Hatten had nine catches for 149 yards and two touchdowns to lead the Vandals to a 30-23 win at Washington-Grizzly Stadium. He also celebrated his second score, a 43-yarder he snatched off the top of Corbin Walker’s head, by busting out Cristiano Ronaldo’s iconic celebration in front of the north end zone, and then said about the win in the postgame press conference, “I knew it was going to happen.”

“(Washington-Grizzly) has to be my favorite stadium I’ve ever played in, just based off the atmosphere and everything,” Hatten said. “I love how passionate the fans are there. … That’s why you play the game, right, to go in and prove people wrong and show out and have fun in an environment like that.”

That belief in himself and his team is the perfect mirror of his head coach, who’s engineered one of the biggest turnarounds in the country.

Fair or not, Paul Petrino was quickly acquiring a reputation as the Jeff Fisher of the FCS – in the three full seasons since the Vandals dropped back down to the Big Sky Conference, they’d finished 3-5 in conference play every year, and either 4-7 or 5-7 overall.

Eck, who looks like a side character from a forgotten season of Cheers and has the press-conference demeanor of a golden retriever, led the Vandals to a 7-4 record that included six Big Sky wins and the program’s first FCS playoff berth since bolting from then-Division I-AA following the 1995 season.

In his first game coaching Idaho, the former South Dakota State offensive coordinator went for it seven times on fourth down against Washington State and nearly pulled the upset over the Cougars, 24-17.

In the “upset” over Montana, Eck called for an onside kick to start the second half, then chortled after the game, “Everyone told me that we wanted to have the ball to start the second half, so that was the only way to get it.”

Hatten meshes perfectly with Eck’s gambling, “screw it, let’s try it” style – you can almost hear the coach whispering that to himself on the sideline every time he sees Hatten matched up one-on-one.

Hatten is a physical receiver, adept at using his body to either out-jump defensive backs for contested catches, like he did to Crosby and Walker, or seal them off on slants by the goal line, like he did on a couple of his three second-half touchdowns against Sacramento State. He also has great hands and perhaps the longest reel of highlight catches of anybody in the league. After a whirling, leaping, one-handed catch in the side of the end zone earlier this year against Portland State – a fade this time against one-on-one coverage by the goal line – he whipped out another iconic athlete’s famous celebration: Michael Jordan’s shrug.

The Vandals also happen to have the perfect recipe for continuing to get Hatten in one-on-one situations – a great receiver on the other side in Jackson, a very accurate quarterback in McCoy and an effective running game with Roshaun Johnson and freshman Anthony Woods.

“I do kind of like, in man-to-man coverage, one-on-one, Hatten against everybody we play,” Eck said after the Eastern Washington game. “There’s nobody we back down from there.” Eck can barely contain his glee while he’s talking about this, trying not to smile.

Hayden is now part of a trifecta of Hattens at Idaho that includes his twin brother and linebacker Hogan and their cousin Jack, a 6-foot-6 redshirt freshman guard on the basketball team. Their house is a magnet for other Vandal athletes on campus (and, in fact, where the inspiration for the Ronaldo celebration comes from – the trio plays a lot of FIFA. Hayden’s go-to teams: France and Liverpool).

That they ended up at Idaho at all, though, is a bit of an upset. Originally, their path out of Scottsdale, Arizona, where the twins’ dad runs a branch of Josten’s, the cap-and-cape company, and their mom runs a Chick-Fil-A franchise, seemed to point towards the Ivy League. Hayden is studying economics with plans to go into the family business, and the brothers knew that they were going to the same school so that their parents could see them both play at the same time.

An initial commitment to Brown fell through when the coaching staff was fired, and Idaho was one of the few schools to offer both twins a scholarship. In fact, the Vandals were the only Big Sky team to offer Hayden at all (“I was kind of taken aback when I couldn’t get NAU,” he said).

He made the Lumberjacks regret that early, catching the first two touchdowns of his career against NAU in the final game of his freshman season in 2019 after appearing in every game that season.

Hatten was second in the Big Sky with 43 receptions in the 2021 spring season and was set for a breakout year with 12 catches, 200 yards and three touchdowns in the first two games of 2021 before hurting his shoulder and missing the rest of the year.

Doing his best work in the under-the-radar spring season and the unfortunate timing of the injury kept Hatten a little bit of a surprise for people who weren’t watching Idaho closely.

Nobody outside of Moscow would have predicted that the receiver with the most touchdowns in the country this year would have had under 70 career catches entering the season. Nobody outside of Moscow would have guessed that the Vandals would be flirting with a top-10 spot at any point in the season either.

But after a slow start to the season (for all of his outstanding stats, Hatten’s most unique statline of the year might be this – he had 13 yards on six catches in the season opener at Washington State), Hatten and the Vandals are now rolling, and neither looks inclined to shy away from the new spotlight.

“I just think the most important thing in college football is believing you’re gonna win, and having an entire team’s culture change to believing you’re gonna win is important,” Hatten said. “I’m a very confident individual, I believe in myself and being surrounded with the people I’m surrounded by, it definitely helps me personally. … I think anybody who’s been here and saw it firsthand, how everybody just kind of flipped and really has belief in the program…it’s an exciting time to be a Vandal.”

The University of Montana has one of the most storied and successful coaching trees in all of Division I men’s college basketball. It’s a lofty weight to shoulder as each branch grows.

From Judd Heathcote to Jim Brandenburgh, Mike Montgomery to Stew Morrill, Blaine Taylor to Don Holst, Larry Krystkowiak to Wayne Tinkle, most every head coach for the Griz has launched successful careers in Missoula, reaching the highest ranks of the game after departing the Garden City.

Heathcote won a national championship at Michigan State with Magic Johnson as his point guard after helping recruit Micheal Ray Richardson, the No. 4 overall pick in the NBA Draft, to the Griz. Brandenburgh went on to a Hall of Fame career at Wyoming. Montgomery led Stanford to the Final Four before serving as the head coach of the Golden State Warriors.

Stew Morrill became one of the great mid-major coaches in the country, helping Utah State perennially dominate the WAC. Taylor will likely be in the Hall of Fame at Montana and Old Dominion. Holst, despite his unceremonious firing 20 years ago, led UM to the NCAA Tournament his final year guiding the Grizzlies.

Krystkowiak, arguably the greatest Griz player this side of “Sugar Ray” Richardson, played in the NBA for 13 years and was the most recent head coach to help the Griz win an NCAA Tournament game when Montana took down Nevada in 2006. UM’s version of Coach K went on to coach in the NBA before spending a decade as the head coach at the University of Utah.

And Tinkle, a 1,500-point scorer during his playing career at UM, led the Grizzlies to three Big Dances in four years before taking over at Oregon State. Last March, Tinkle led the Beavers on one of the great Cinderella runs in the history of the NCAA Tournament, guiding a 12-seed to the Elite Eight.

Since Heathcote roamed the sidelines at Dahlberg Arena in the mid-1970s, almost every man who has done so, including former Lady Griz head coach Robin Selvig, had fierce ties to the University of Montana. Over the last four decades, many have worked for and with one another, helping weave one of the richest and most influential coaching trees in college basketball.

“It’s a cradle of basketball on the West Coast,” Montgomery said in an interview in 2020. “Everyone that has come through Montana has gone on to do very, very well. I don’t know exactly what it is but the fundamentals, the foundation that was laid and how the game should be played, how kids should be treated, how important it was to all of us that were there, it was all-consuming.

“And that continues with Travis DeCuire today.”

Chris Cobb grew up in the Bay Area and played prep at Bishop O’Dowd, one of the premier high school hoops programs on the West Coast. Montana’s current associate head coach first met DeCuire when Cobb was an assistant at his alma mater Chico State, as DeCuire spent six seasons as an assistant on Montgomery’s staff at Cal.

Cobb and DeCuire clicked early, recruiting in the same circles and finding the best ways to pluck talent out of the unbelievable bed of elite basketball players in the area.

And Cobb remembers, even 10 years ago, how much DeCuire would talk about his alma mater and the connections he gained from his time playing at Montana under Morrill and Taylor, then coaching for Taylor at Old Dominion and Montgomery at Cal.

But when DeCuire took the head job at Montana before the 2014-2015 season, the lore of the Griz really started to sink in.

Take a look around Dahlberg Arena and you see championship banners hanging by the dozens. Many belong to Selvig, the legendary Lady Griz architect who played for Heathcote before winning 865 games and advancing to 24 NCAA Tournaments in his 38 seasons at the helm for UM women’s hoops.

Sometimes, the shadows cast by those that came before can be intimidating.

“This is one of the cooler jobs in the country, in the sense that you can’t take this job, you can’t do well at this job, if you don’t know or have not experienced what this place is,” Cobb said.

“I learned right away, I just don’t know if you can do well, I don’t know if you can have the level of pride and understanding that needs to go into it, if you don’t know about the pride and tradition of leading the Grizzlies. Travis encompasses that every day.”

Taylor, a Missoulian with Butte roots who prepped at Hellgate High before starring for the Griz as a slick point guard under Brandenburgh and Montgomery, had a role on championship staffs under Montgomery and Morrill before taking over as head coach when Morrill left for Colorado State in 1991. Taylor went on to win 141 games at Montana, leading the Griz to the NCAA Tournament in 1992 and 1997 before joining Montgomery at Stanford.

Taylor also won 239 games in 12 seasons at Old Dominion and went to the Big Dance four more times, with a few of those runs aided by DeCuire’s help as an assistant.

“When Travis took the job at Montana, it seems like the shadow keeps getting longer,” Taylor said. “And Travis has lived up to it.”

As DeCuire navigates his eighth season leading Montana, he continues to etch his own legacy in the Griz hoops history books.

The native of Seattle has won 20 games four times and needs two more wins to reach the mark again this year. He tied and retied the school record of 26 wins in a single season when he guided the Grizzlies to consecutive NCAA Tournaments in 2018 and 2019. He has three regular-season Big Sky titles to his credit and he’s in search of his third Big Sky tournament title, which would tie Tinkle for the most in program history.

This season, DeCuire has passed Montgomery and Tinkle on Montana’s all-time win list. In January, he won his 100^th Big Sky game, a record for a Griz head coach. He enters this tournament with 160 career wins, second in school history behind only George “Jiggs” Dahlberg, the man Montana’s basketball arena is named after.

And while he played for Morrill and Taylor, learned under each as coaches and also has experience coaching high school and junior college hoops on the West Coast, DeCuire knew right away he had to put his own stamp on Griz basketball when he initially took the reins.

“When I took this job, I wanted to do some things different and try to put a fingerprint on it that separates me from everyone else, as opposed to chasing the ghosts,” DeCuire said as he sat in the head coach’s office at the Adams Center, a room that’s adorned with trophies and nets and pictures and jerseys of the legends of the past.

“I knew if I came here and said I’m going to come here and win more banners and go to the NCAA Tournament more, win more games and do these things, well, I’m just chasing ghosts. I’m trying to do something that everyone else before me has not done. And I think that something everyone has done that’s special before me, they had a different personality and they did something different.

“I had to find a way to set a standard that’s my own standard that people accept without me being compared to those before me or I’d never be successful.”

DeCuire has retained Montana’s fierce home court advantage; the Griz went 14-3 in Missoula this season. He has graduated players at a top-notch rate, helping those who didn’t transfer out of his program earn a degree almost across the board. He has also made sure his players are active participants in the classroom and active members of the community.

“I think the one thing that I would say that I’ve learned from him most, from being with him day-in and day-out, is seeing his preparation,” Cobb said. “That preparation leads to him being able to demand the most out of people.”

DeCuire also has the respect of his peers. After initially giving feedback about his rival counterpart, Montana State head coach Danny Sprinkle called back to say he’d love to talk about DeCuire’s passion and pedigree even more. That’s another part of DeCuire’s resume at UM – he’s 14-2 all-time against the Bobcats. Most recently, the Griz defeated the first-place Bobcats 80-74 to extend a home winning streak over MSU that dates back to 2010, denying the Bobcats the conference title for at least one more game in the process.

“The first word that comes to mind is tough and the second is disciplined,” Sprinkle said. “They always seem to be in the right place at the right time and that’s why he’s had the success he’s had. He really does a good job of getting guys to buy in to their role. He gets guys to play tough that may not be that tough. They take on his personality.”

Steve Smiley, the head coach of Northern Colorado, and Todd Simon, the head coach at Southern Utah — both are seeded ahead of Montana in this year’s Big Sky Tournament field — echoed similar sentiments to Sprinkle, who was named the Big Sky Coach of the Year earlier this week.

“What you have to expect is you have to expect a battle,” said Smiley, whose team won for the fourth time in their last five trips to Missoula last week. “If you come into one of these games soft or on your heels, you are going to have real problems. Every single year, his guys are tough, they are going to play really hard and they are going to be physical.”

“When you play Montana, you know they aren’t going to roll over for anybody,” Simon added. “You know it’s going to be a knock-down, drag-out affair. And that’s the way we want it. Coach DeCuire is a fierce competitor. These battles are always fun college basketball games. I certainly respect the ball coach he is.”

Of the UM coaching tree, Montgomery stayed eight years at Montana before moving to Palo Alto. Taylor coached seven years in his hometown before moving to Stanford with Montgomery. Tinkle spent eight seasons at his alma mater before moving to Corvallis.

DeCuire is now in his eighth year. He’s noted that one of the factors that he hopes will distinguish himself from his predecessors is longevity — even if most believe it’s a matter of when, not if DeCuire moves on to another opportunity.

When asked what drives him, DeCuire references his fear of complacency. And he also acknowledges that the pride and tradition of Griz hoops is what keeps complacency away.

Nothing lasts forever, particularly in college athletics. But the fact is that DeCuire is the next in the line of a prestigious coaching tree while also leaving his mark on his alma mater. His love for the University of Montana is the tie that binds.

“Travis epitomizes that pride in this place,” Cobb said. “He played here. He’s coached here. He’s coached under the guys that hung a lot of banners up here. It’s a big deal to him, it means something to him.

“And I think when he’s not coaching here, when he retires and he’s sitting in Seattle on his porch, he’s going to always pay attention to this, this place, Dahlberg, Missoula. Griz hoops and this place, it’s what means the most to him.”

Photos by Brooks Nuanez. All Rights Reserved.

Just ask Velaida Harris.

Weber State’s head coach was fresh off her first Big Sky Tournament victory in Monday’s first round as the 10th-seeded Wildcats stunned No. 7 Sacramento State to advance to the quarterfinals.

And for the first 15 minutes of WSU’s game against the Bobcats, Weber clogged the lane and stifled the Montana State offense, helping WSU take an early lead.

But White and the Bobcats raced to a 12-1 run to take a 36-33 halftime lead before dominating the second 20 minutes on the way to an 81-60 victory that wasn’t as easy as the final score would indicate.

What changed from the point when WSU held a 31-19 lead to Montana State celebrating its third straight trip to the Big Sky Tournament semifinals?

“I think Darian White responded,” Harris, WSU’s fourth-year head coach, said. “It was her ability to get downhill on us. And when she didn’t score, her ability to create from that was huge. She does that to a lot of people.”

Getting down hill, getting into the paint, penetrating, kicking to open teammates, finishing at the rim…that’s part of what makes White the best point guard in the Big Sky Conference. But that’s only a fraction of what she does for Tricia Binford’s Bobcats.

“This young lady to my left, what she does on both ends of the floor, she still doesn’t get enough credit,” Binford said while addressing the media following her team’s quarterfinal victory over Weber. “She carries us and picks up everybody on both ends and I thought she was fantastic taking over in the second half.”

White is Montana State’s primary ball handler. She is Montana State’s primary score and primary facilitator. She is also the most aggressive and fearsome on-ball defensive player in Big Sky women’s basketball.

“She can get after you for 94 feet, full court press if that’s what Trish wants to do with her and she’s so disruptive, so competitive,” former Montana head coach Mike Petrino said last season after playing the Bobcats in a rivalry game. “It’s impressive all she does for them.”

More than what White does tangibly on the basketball court, it’s been her personal blossoming into a steadfast leader who can handle the bright spotlight that has been thrust upon her despite her quiet, unassuming personality that is most impressive.

White, a Boise native and a star since the day she first laced up her sneakers for a Bobcat team that went 19-1 in Big Sky play a few years ago when she was a true freshman, is now one of the most visible players in the West in mid-major college basketball.

“She’s settled in to the leadership of our team but also the bull’s eye on her back,” said Binford, MSU’s 17th year head coach who was an All-Big Sky point guard herself during her college days starring at Boise State in the mid-1990s.

“We understand we are going to get a great game from everybody and she is going to be a huge focus on that. She’s really challenged herself to evolve her game for things opponents have tried to take away.

“But more than anything, it’s her evolution to be able to handle all the attention she gets, both from opposing defenses and from the media. The spotlight has been on her and she’s handled it so gracefully.”

To watch White pick up the opposition full-court or guard doggedly in the half-court or use her phenomenal explosion to break off defenders when she’s running the show offensively is a stark dichotomy to watching her carry herself off the court. The 5-foot-6 junior is demure and reserved when she doesn’t have a basketball in her hands and her constantly cheerful demeanor seems to belie the aggressive competitor she transforms into when she hits the hardwood.

“She is always smiling,” Binford said. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen her in a bad mood. She’s a competitor so the look when she is competing is so much different than when she’s just smiling. The kid doesn’t have a bad day. The kid does not have a bad practice. When she steps on the floor, she is going to try to out compete you every time. And off the court, she never stops being positive.”

Many believed White deserved to earn Big Sky Conference MVP honors after guiding her team within a game of sharing the regular-season Big Sky title with Idaho State. Her 15.8 points per game ranked second in the league this season and her 4.3 assists per contest ranked third. Despite being one of the slightest guards in the league, she ranked 25^th in the conference in rebounding at 5.0 boards per game.

She is the league-leader in steals at 2.6 per contest, one of the best marks in the nation at the Division I level. And she’s got her team on the brink of their first championship game appearance since she arrived at Montana State.

“She’s a great player and we are the same grade so I’ve gotten to compete against here the whole time,” Idaho junior Beyonce Bea, a first-team All-Big Sky performer, said earlier this season. “It’s always a good battle between our two teams, it always has been. It’s always a very physical game. She does a great job leading her team, honestly, so I enjoy playing her and her team as well.”

White’s freshman year, the Bobcats didn’t get a chance to go dancing for the second time under Binford because the global pandemic cancelled the pending championship matchup with Idaho.

On Wednesday evening, White and the Bobcats get another shot at the Vandals, a team that took out MSU in the Big Sky Tournament semifinals last season. The second women’s semifinal tips at 8 p.m. on Wednesday from Idaho Central Arena.

White also has the added dynamic of playing in front of some of her hometown faithful, many of which cheered on the Bobcats Tuesday night and are sure to return on Wednesday. As is her standard mode of operating, White remains focused on the end goal and the task at hand.

“It’s really exciting being here in Boise,” White said. “I went out today and saw some friends and old coaches that I didn’t know were coming. Like I’ve said in previous years, we can’t focus on things like that. We come here for a business trip and we want to win a ring. We have to stay focused on what we want.”

Photos by Brooks Nuanez. All Rights Reserved.