The Idaho Vandals dominated the first half and then weathered a late comeback attempt from the Montana Lady Griz Saturday afternoon en route to a 67-56 road win at Dahlberg Arena.
Mikayla Ferenz had 24 points, including two crucial 3-pointers late, and Geraldine McCorkell 20 for the Vandals (15-10, 11-3), who ran their conference winning streak to nine games and kept pace a half-game behind first-place Northern Colorado, which won 60-54 at Southern Utah.
Montana (12-14, 8-7) lost for the fourth time in a row, dropping another important game as the Lady Griz battle with several other teams for positioning in the middle of the Big Sky standings.
Idaho guard Mikayla Ferenz (21)/by Brooks Nuanez
“We’ve got to stop burying ourselves,” Lady Griz head coach Shannon Schweyen said. “We’ve got probably one of the best comeback teams in the league, but in order to give ourselves a chance, we’ve got to stop burying ourselves by 20 and doing this all the time.”
Saturday’s game started off bad and got worse for the Lady Griz, who didn’t score for the first 6:40 of the game, missing their first seven shots and falling behind 10-0.
Aside from that, starting point guard and leading scorer McKenzie Johnston picked up two fouls in the first four minutes of the game and was forced to sit for the rest of the first half.
“I was frustrated,” Johnston said. “I haven’t had to do that, so I was fueled up. I was a little pissed off at myself for getting in foul trouble.”
A long 2-point jumper by Hailey Nicholson with 3:40 left in the first quarter finally got the Lady Griz on the board, but it couldn’t snap them out of their slump.
A 3-pointer by Madi Schoening was the only other bucket Montana could manage in the quarter, one that ended with the Lady Griz shooting just 2-of-15 for 13 percent.
Idaho guard Taylor Pierce (14)/by Brooks Nuanez
“I felt like we got good shots in the first half,” Schweyen said. “We executed things pretty well and we had wide-open 15-footers for some of our best shooters. They weren’t guarding our posts, so we made some adjustments and our kids had wide-open dribble jumpers. Nobody was knocking them down.”
Their opponents didn’t have that problem. The Vandals made five 3-pointers in the opening period, two each by Taylor Pierce and Ferenz, and took a 20-5 lead heading into the second quarter.
The visitors stayed hot in the second, thanks to Pierce’s scorching shooting. The junior guard started off the period with a 3-pointer.
After Montana made a short run, capped off by a 3-pointer by Nora Klick, to cut the gap to 27-17, Pierce was back at it again.
She buried another triple for an immediate response, came right back with a pullup jumper and, after a jumper by Montana’s Jace Henderson stopped her personal run, curled around a screen and splashed a quick-trigger 3.
When the dust cleared, Pierce was up to 17 points and her team was back ahead 35-19. She would finish with 19.
Idaho would go into halftime leading 41-22 after a buzzer-beating 3 by Mikayla Ferenz capped a nearly perfect half.
Montana guard McKenzie Johnston (32)/by Brooks Nuanez
“They’re a very versatile team,” Johnston said. “They’re all great shooters, and they have a big post presence, so they’re just hard to guard.”
It wouldn’t be quite that easy for the Vandals in the second. After being torched in every way imaginable in the first half, the Lady Griz defense tightened up significantly, allowing the Vandals just six points in the entire third quarter.
Johnston also came back in and showed why the Lady Griz missed her so much. She scored six points in the quarter by herself, including a pullup jumper with 53 seconds left that cut Idaho’s lead, so insurmountable at halftime, to single digits at 47-38.
“I think we just attacked them more,” Johnston said. “We were the aggressors in the second half. We put pressure on them and found the open girls, and I thought we were getting a lot easier baskets.”
The sophomore guard then picked up where she left off in the fourth. Down 52-42, she hit back-to-back pullup jumpers, and Caitlin Lonergan followed with another for the Lady Griz to make it 52-48.
That was when Ferenz took over. The junior, Idaho’s leading scorer at 22.8 points per game coming in, knocked down a 3-pointer to get her team some breathing room. After two empty possessions from Montana, the Lady Griz left her open again and she canned another triple from the left wing to make it 58-48.
Montana forward Caitlin Lonergan (30)/by Brooks Nuanez
The Lady Griz wouldn’t get closer than six points from there.
After her tough start, Johnston finished with 14 points for Montana, all in the second half. Caitlin Lonergan pitched in 11 points and seven rebounds off the bench.
The Lady Griz will now be off for a week before hosting rival Montana State on Feb. 24 at 2 p.m.
Idaho will host Idaho State on Thursday.
Photos by Brooks Nuanez. All Rights Reserved.
