For most Montana Grizzlies fans, the enduring memory of Brandon Gfeller has become a steady stream of 3-pointers cutting through the net. While this image is also ingrained in the minds of his fellow players, the sight of Gfeller sitting behind a laptop studying accounting has come to define the senior just as much as his shooting prowess.
“Whenever you have free time you try to pull your laptop. Brandon Gfeller is probably the best at that, you always see him on his laptop studying,” sophomore guard Michael Oguine said Monday afternoon as the Griz wrapped up their final practice before tonight’s showdown at No. 22 Oregon.
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That’s likely how Gfeller spent a good portion of Montana’s trip back to Missoula from a last-second 85-83 loss at Wyoming. What could have been a trip similar to those Montana plays during conference season — the Griz played Wyoming on Dec. 10, four days before their game with Oregon — was instead cut in half so players could return to campus and take whatever finals were scheduled prior to the team’s final road swing of the non-conference schedule.
“We take them before we leave — most of them,” said Montana coach Travis DeCuire, now in his third season at his alma mater. “No finals on the road. Most of them are before we leave or when we get back.”
With finals officially set to begin Dec. 14, some players already got a few out of the way. Fabijan Krslovic, who has two finals remaining Thursday, finished a group project last week and submitted a paper online Sunday night. Oguine, who holds a 3.6 GPA, has four finals, but two are online.
While it sounds like a daunting task preparing for two teams in four days, while also making sure academics are in order, this is nothing knew for Montana’s players. Oguine said he learned to balance academics and athletics in high school. It also helps that a handful of players have overlapping classes, making it easier to stay up on whatever is required of them by various professors.
“If we’re on the road and we have something to do we can kind of help each other stay on top of it,” said Krslovic, who achieved a 4.0 GPA during the 2016 spring semester. “Other classes it’s just you gotta force yourself to stay on top of things. Do a little bit of extra work maybe before you leave so you’re not behind.”
Academics have been pushed to the forefront of the program’s focus since DeCuire took over in May 2014. That concentration boosted the team’s cumulative GPA above 3.0 for the first time in program history and helped DeCuire achieve something he has been striving to accomplish throughout his coaching career.
“I’ve been working to achieve a 3.0 team cumulative GPA for 13 years and finally have been able to make it happen with this group of young men,” DeCuire said in August after Montana was bestowed the Team Academic Excellence Award by the National Association of Basketball Coaches as one of almost two dozen Division I teams to post a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or better during the 2015-16 season.
Ten of Montana’s 16 players posted GPAs of better than 3.0 that season and Oguine and redshirt freshman Trever Spoja, who both made the Dean’s list last year, became the first two players in program history to be admitted to the Davidson Honors College. Additionally, four players — Gfeller, Jack Lopez, Krslovic and Oguine — were selected to the 2015-16 Academic All-Big Sky team.
To allow for such accomplishments, the coaching staff has worked closely with academic advisors to make sure players are on the right academic track. Whether that means ensuring players are back on campus and not in an airport terminal or hotel conference room somewhere for finals, or bringing Grace Gardner, the team’s academic advisor, along for their lengthy stay in St. Thomas earlier this year.
“We have our tutors and academic advisers,” Oguine said. “Coaches, too, always stay on top of us making sure they know what our schedule is. It’s not only us, it’s them helping us as well. We find a way to do it on the road.”
Oguine said the latest trip to Missoula wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The Griz bused from Laramie to Denver where they caught a direct flight back home. Then late Monday afternoon, Montana loaded up a direct commercial flight to Portland and then bused to Eugene. That’s rare for a team that has in the past navigated tight connections and early departure times.
Montana tried to work out a date with Oregon in late November, but the Ducks schedule made that difficult. When that fell through, the Griz nearly signed to play at St. Mary’s, but again couldn’t agree on a date and renegotiated with Oregon.
“For us we just take games when we can get them,” DeCuire said. “We can’t get home games; there aren’t a lot teams that will play us. So we end up with bad dates from time to time.”
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