BOISE, Idaho — As the confetti poured down from the rafters of Idaho Central Arena, Blaire Braxton and Katie Bussey met in an exuberant embrace, Bussey the former shooting guard jumping into Braxton the former center’s arms as symbolic music echoed throughout the arena.
After a few seconds, Darian White interrupted the celebratory hug, turning the two-person squeeze into a trio of joy. Those close enough could see the tears in all of their eyes.
This celebration meant more than just the singularity of the moment. The Montana State women’s basketball team is going dancing. And that’s significant because of the accomplishment over the last months, but also because of the endurance of the last few years.
Friday afternoon’s triumph meant so much more than just cutting down these nets, just hoisting this 2022 Big Sky Tournament title trophy.
Montana State 17th-year head coach Tricia Binford has been a stalwart in the Big Sky Conference, particularly over the last five years as she’s taken the role as the matriarch of the league. Friday afternoon’s Big Sky Tournament championship win by Montana State over Northern Arizona served as a moment of redemption for a program that has had so much snatched from it over the last handful of years.
Rewind to 2016. Binford led the Bobcats to their first regular-season title…and didn’t get to host the conference tournament. In the first neutral site tournament in league history, Idaho State’s Juliet Jones nailed a three-quarter-court buzzer-beater to derail MSU’s Big Dance hopes after just one game. The narrative then was what if the tournament had in Bozeman rather than the Biggest Little City in the world.
The following year, the Bobcat women broke through by advancing to women’s college basketball’s biggest stage. But the draw was a matchup at the University of Washington against a UW team led by Kelsey Plum, the all-time leading scorer in women’s Division I history. And despite a heroic 33-point effort from Big Sky MVP Peyton Ferris, the Bobcats didn’t have much of a chance at Hec-Edmundson Pavilion playing a Pac 12 power essentially on their home court.
At that moment when Ferris & company graduated, no one knew the tumult on the horizon. Binford’s program gained momentum, then had it snatched away, first with the Jones swish, then with the global pandemic that called off the 2020 tournament, costing a Bobcat team that set a Big Sky record with 19 league victories from advancing to the Big Dance.
That MSU team featured five seniors, including league MVP Fallyn Freije along with Braxton, now an MSU assistant, plus Madeline Smith, Martha Kuderer and All-Big Sky combo guard Oliana Squires.
So when White — named Big Sky Tournament MVP earlier in the day in her hometown with her mother, high school coaches, and a collection of other longtime supporters looking on — sat down at the podium of the post-game press conference following MSU’s 75-64 win over Northern Arizona to advance to the NCAA Tournament, White asked the press corps in a demure fashion if she could read a handwritten thought she had prepared.
“For Blaire, Fallyn, Martha, Madeline and Oliana, I know you are watching this and I just want to say, we got redemption,” “White read. “You guys are always in our hearts and our minds and we got the championship we dreamed of.
“I know Covid took it away (in 2020) but like I said, I’m glad we finally got that redemption.”
When asked about her feelings before and during the game, White gave more perspective.
“This is deeper than just a basketball game,” White said. “It was heartbreaking to have that ripped away from us, especially how talented we were. And they were all seniors. So we didn’t get that opportunity again.”
But this iteration of the Bobcats embraced the challenge of playing for those that came before them. And the victory over NAU came with so many rich accompanying story lines.
White, a product of Mountain View High School in Meridian, 10 miles west of Idaho’s capital city, took over the game down the stretch, scoring 10 of her game-high 17 points in the fourth quarter on the way to earning tournament MVP honors.
Ava Ranson, an upstart reserve who prepped at Timberline High in Boise, looked like a confident all-league player in her spot minutes, converting at the rim twice and hitting a step-back jumper that gave MSU some juice.
Madison Jackson, a hyperactive junior from nearby Parma, Idaho, who was in the same recruiting class as White and fellow All-Tournament team selection Kola Bad Bear, hit a 3-pointer to give MSU its first lead midway through the second quarter.
And for Binford, a legendary Hall of Fame point guard at Boise State in the mid-1990s who then played professionally before rapidly rising through the coaching ranks, Saturday was sweet as sugar. Not only did she get to experience the redemption White expressed and celebrate with Braxton, Kuderer was sitting in the second row and other former players Hannah Caudill and Alexa Dawkins were also in the stands.
Binford also got to punch a ticket to the Big Dance in a place she once called home behind the play of a point guard everyone who’s ever followed Big Sky basketball says most closely resembles her.
“It’s crazy and I think Darian said it best when she said it was hard to describe,” Binford said. “I am, first off, just so happy for them. It’s been a long couple of years with COVID and you need to surround yourself with really special people who lift each other up and serve each other, and they had a really special reward today.”
Building processes are steep. Northern Arizona head coach Loree Payne is in the middle of one and she acknowledged as much, referencing Binford’s growing pains her first few years at MSU and recognizing that it took the Bobcats almost a decade to become real-deal contenders.
Payne, a former All-American at the University of Washington who hails from Havre, Montana, had her once irrelevant program playing in the Big Sky title game in her fifth season at the helm.
NAU senior Lauren Orndoff went down with a brutal knee injury in the first half, robbing the fourth-seeded Lumberjacks of their senior leader and, for a moment, silencing the 956 in attendance for a few moments on an otherwise energetic Friday for both the women’s championship and the men’s semifinals.
Yet the ‘Jacks kept charging. Northern Arizona mounted a 17-0 run that encompassed the final 2:20 of the third quarter and the first 2:35 of the fourth quarter. Emily Rodabaugh’s fourth 3-pointer gave NAU a 53-51 lead in the final frame.
“Then we put the ball in Darian White’s hands,” Binford said.
The most aggressive, relentless and impressive player in the league scored at the rim to halt NAU’s substantial run with 6:53 left and tie it at 53. She scored eight of the next 10 points overall and scored 10 of her game-high 17 points in the final seven minutes of the game to earn tournament MVP honors after many thought she got snubbed in the Big Sky’s regular-season MVP voting.
Leia Beattie, an MSU sophomore who set the tone in the contest by drilling her first two 3-pointers early, stretched the MSU advantage to 71-62 with 32 seconds left after hitting three straight free throws on the way to finishing with 16 points. NAU didn’t threaten again.
White finished with five of MSU’s 13 assists to go with her game-high point total while also doggedly guarding NAU junior point guard Regan Schenck, herself an All-Tournament team selection after scoring 24 total points and dishing out 16 total assists plus adding 14 total rebounds between the semifinal and final alone. Schenck and NAU senior forward Khiarica Rasheed each earned All-Tournament team honors.
“To be able to get there and then see the girls perform and to overcome everything that we have this year, it’s very special,” said Braxton, who was a freshman on Montana State’s last NCAA Tournament team. “My team missed out on this a couple of years ago, but this felt like redemption. It was five years ago today that my team won this when I was a freshman so this is affirming and amazing. I can’t even describe it.”
Binford’s building was incremental before it became rapid. Her first season, the former WNBA and Australian League standout won three games in 2003.
She flirted with Big Sky contention for the first time when she took the Bobcats to the tournament championship game five years later before getting blown out by one of Robin Selvig’s great teams during his legendary career at the University of Montana.
In 2011, MSU won 19 games as stud guard Katie Bussey set scoring and 3-point shooting records, giving glimpses of things to come. But it would take five more seasons for Montana State to experience a regular-season title, another season after that for Binford to go dancing for the first time and five additional tries for the Bobcats to make a second trip to the NCAA Tournament.
“On the sideline, you just want it so bad for the kids and it’s amazing to see them come together and do it for each other,” Bussey said. “It’s so much fun enjoying it through them and watching them share it with each other and with us.”
It seems everything from Bozeman turns to gold lately. The Montana State football team mounted one of the most memorable runs in league history, culminating in their first national championship game in 37 years. The MSU men’s basketball team won the regular-season title for the first time in 20 years and plays Northern Colorado on Saturday night with a chance to advance to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1996. Saturday afternoon, distance runner Duncan Hamilton and high jumper Lucy Corbett participate in the NCAA national indoor track and field championships. Heck, even Bozeman High School plays in tonight’s Class AA state title game.
Much of the credit for the rise of Montana State goes to President Waded Cruzado, an effusively competitive and passionate figure who has had as big an impact on the state of Montana as any single figure over the last decade. Credit also goes to athletic director Leon Costello, who has raised money, spread the brand and elevated the profile of the entire university.
But Costello is quick to deflect and acknowledge just how much Binford has built her championship Bobcats on her own, a process that started more than a decade before he arrived at MSU.
“She is our leader and she has been around a long time and she is a mentor for our younger coaches and for all of us,” Costello said. “If you go around our department, our coaches all embody the same thing. Some of them coach kids hard and some don’t, but what you are seeing so consistently with our student-athletes is they know our coaches care and they know our support staff cares. We are all in it for them and when you have that and you understand that, great things can happen.
“And Tricia taught us that. She taught us that being positive and believing and serving others can equal championships.”
Binford has stayed the course, recruiting entertaining and endearing players who are also exceptional academically and pleasant members of the campus community.
Friday, Beattie scored 16 points, Bad Bear added 13 and Ranson scored eight, as did stretch forward K.J. Limardo, one of the unsung heroes of this MSU run to the conference tournament title.
NAU’s record finishes at 17-14. Montana State moves to 22-12 with the win and now awaits its seed.
“I can’t even describe the feeling,” Bad Bear, a Billings Senior product, said after unwrapping her previously damaged knee while wearing her championship hat backward and a smile on her face.
“This is what I always dreamed of and as a little girl, this is all you ever want. And now we are going dancing. Basketball is a game where it’s hard work, sweat, tears, everything and this is very rewarding. I think our team and our coaches deserve it.”
