The run began innocently enough, with a Timmy Falls steal at 12:55 of the first half stopping a stretch of baskets on five consecutive possessions by Weber State.
It was Montana’s first defensive stop in three and a half minutes.
By the time that Montana’s run was over, the Griz would string together 13 more successful defensive possessions in a row, hold the Wildcats scoreless for nearly nine minutes and score 20 consecutive points to break out to a huge lead that — although it got close at times in the second half — they never relinquished in their crucial 75-68 win Saturday night.
“We call them double bangs, that’s what we call a stop and a score,” Bobby Moorehead said after Montana’s third straight win. “So we try to put together double bangs back-to-back and then that’s kind of how we gauge if we’re doing well or not.”
The run was even more impressive because Weber State came in as the top offense in the Big Sky Conference and top 30 in the nation.
The Wildcats’ top scorer, Jerrick Harding, is second in the conference in scoring at over 21 points per game.
But for most of the first half, he looked just as lost as the rest of his team as Montana’s defense controlled the game.
The Grizzlies’ first defensive priority was slowing down the fast pace that Weber likes to play at.
Led by the lightning-quick Harding, the Wildcats are one of the fastest teams in the country, ranking 32nd in the nation, and first in the Big Sky, in Ken Pomeroy’s adjusted tempo stat (possessions per 40 minutes).
“Transition was our number one key, we had to get back in this game if we were going to slow them down,” UM head coach Travis DeCuire said.
Montana held Weber to just two fast break points for the entire game, and the emphasis on transition defense showed during the big first-half run.
On Weber’s best transition chance during the stretch, a runout on a rebound by Cody John, Montana big man Jamar Akoh got back first to slow down the Weber guard.
Sayeed Pridgett, hustling all the way back, timed his jump perfectly to swat John’s layup into the corner.
Hustle plays like this one from @SP4THABOY played a HUGE part in the 20-0 first half run for the Grizzlies! #GrizHoops held the #1 team in the Big Sky (for now 😏) without a basket for NINE MINUTES! The Grizzlies have got the Wildcats ON LOCKS! 🔒⬇️#GoGriz🐻🏀 pic.twitter.com/Jx7XKipLBd
— Montana Griz Basketball (@MontanaGrizBB) January 27, 2019
“Our big thing all week was two things: toughness and sprinting back in transition and not making it easy on them to get shots,” Montana associate head coach Chris Cobb, who serves as what amounts to UM’s defensive coordinator, said following the game. “I thought we did that during that run.”
After forcing the Wildcats into the halfcourt, Montana focused the defensive effort on stopping Harding and making it hard for the Weber star to get the shots he wanted.
Moorehead, two weeks after forcing the conference’s leading scorer, Northern Colorado’s Jordan Davis, to take 20 shots to get 20 points in an easy Montana win, started out on Harding.
Moorehead’s calling card on defense is his length. He’s one of a very few defenders in the Big Sky that are 6-foot-7 and still quick enough to be able to stay in front of someone like Harding.
“[Harding] is tough,” Moorehead said. “He’s quick, and he doesn’t need much space to get off a shot, and he shoots it really quick. So, even though he’s a lot shorter, it doesn’t really matter if you have a hand up, he’s going to make shots. So you kind of have to have the mindset of he’s going to hit them, so you have to move on to the next one. Just keep doing your best to stay in there because it does help.”
Montana was also prepared to give Moorehead help in the halfcourt. The Grizzlies showed hard on screens and did a good job forcing the Weber ball handlers towards where they had help waiting.
The effect was to give Harding as little time and space as possible.
“Harding’s really good; there’s a few things we did on his ball screens, there’s a few things we did on him with his screens off the ball that I thought gave us a chance,” Cobb said. “I don’t know if it’s so much get the ball out of his hands as it is when he has the ball, make it hard for him to get the shots he wants. I thought we did a really good job of that, putting him in tight areas and tight spaces.”
Despite being in the game for the entirety of Montana’s 20-0 run, Harding took just four of Weber’s 10 shots during the stretch, a win for Montana’s defense when talking about one of the best scorers in the country.
“Their pressure got to us,” Weber head coach Randy Rahe said. “They got into us, made it hard to run our stuff. We knew they were going to do it, but we couldn’t simulate it with our team leading up to it.”
Montana’s defensive effort was also juiced by the support of a season-high crowd of 5,547 at Dahlberg Arena.
As soon as the Griz started their run, the fans rose to their feet, allowing the Montana players to kick up the intensity another notch.
As they kept scoring, it got louder and louder and the momentum kept building.
“I think obviously we were playing motivated, especially when the crowd was loud early,” Moorehead said. “I think the crowd helped. I think just knowing that there’s a lot on the line, at the end of the season the winner of this could be the Big Sky champ. There’s a lot on the line.”
It all added up to one of the most jaw-dropping run of the season, even for a Montana team that’s proven it can flip the switch and hold opponents scoreless for minutes at a time.
“I thought we had a good idea and a good concept for what we wanted to do and the shots that we were willing to give up. I didn’t know it was 15 [stops] in a row, that’s pretty good,” Cobb said. “I think what you see with us, is when we score we’re really good. And I think that’s because when we’re scoring, we’re sprinting back, we’re locking in. … It’s fun when we’re on those runs.”
