BOISE, Idaho – Hand it to the Lady Griz. Caught in the throes of a team-wide illness virulent enough that the opposing coach, Montana State’s Tricia Binford, felt compelled to say “our thoughts are with them” during the postgame press conference, Nate Harris’s team nevertheless fought to the bitter end of their season Sunday afternoon.
Rae Ehrman scored 17 points. Draya Wacker, filling in for starting point guard and lone senior Mack Konig, added 15. None of it was enough. None of it was going to be enough, not with Konig so sick that she couldn’t leave her hotel room. Not with Montana’s only all-conference honoree, Avery Waddington, barely able to gut through a painful and scoreless six minutes before leaving the game.
Still, the Lady Griz scrapped to the end of their 78-57 loss, even when it became apparent that the Boise magic that carried them to the title game as the No. 6 seed a year ago would not be visiting Idaho Central Arena this time.
“I was super proud of the kids that we had available, how they showed up, answered the bell and just kept playing their tails off, playing their hearts out,” Harris said. “It’s all we can do at that point. … Obviously it’s frustrating having everyone get sick, including, you know, staff members, but that’s life. And that’s a great example for our kids. Life’s gonna happen, you have to answer the bell anyway.”
Hand it to Montana State, too. Facing a shorthanded team that they’d beaten by 38 and 17 points already this season, the Bobcats at least put the knife in quick, leading 9-0 two-and-a-half minutes into the game and 23-7 by the end of the first quarter.
Taylee Chirrick put up 13 points, 10 rebounds, six assists and four steals as MSU and the Bobcats’ hellacious defensive pressure easily moved on to the semifinals for the third season in a row.
They now head to a semifinal date against either No. 3 Northern Colorado or No. 6 Eastern Washington. The Lady Griz, meanwhile, head to an uncertain off-season. Not that there’s any other kind anymore, as Harris pointed out.
“College basketball is a crazy world right now,” Harris said. “But again, I’m really thankful for this group and all of their hard work this year.”
Buoyed into his first full season by the lingering good vibes of an unlikely tournament run a year ago – the Lady Griz, remember, were one rebound away from making the NCAA Tournament with Harris as the interim coach – the burly, enthusiastic Ronan native instead found little but struggles in his first crack at his dream job.
Brutal back-to-back away dates at Oregon (a 90-47 loss) and Washington (87-56) at the beginning of the season set the tone. Non-conference contests against South Dakota State, BYU and Utah didn’t help engender confidence.
Konig, whose brilliance fueled Montana’s Boise underdog story a year ago, suffered through injuries and never fully got healthy or seemed to mesh with the rest of a largely new roster.
Robin Selvig’s tenure tends to unfairly color these types of statistics. He won 865 games over 38 seasons, winning 25 league titles during his unprecedented run. Still, the 9-22 record the Lady Griz finished with this season is UM’s second-worst since 1977, beating only a 7-23 mark in 2016-17 under Shannon Schweyen in her first season.
Outside of 3-point shooting, where they led the conference in volume of both attempts and makes, the statistics didn’t indicate much to hang a hat on, either. In a 10-team conference, the Lady Griz finished last in offense and field-goal percentage, ninth in defense, last in rebounding margin and seventh in turnover margin.
And given those numbers and the weight of expectations that still surrounds the program, there’s no question that, even after just one season, the upcoming off-season is a crucial one for Harris and his continued employment prospects.
That’s the bad news. The potentially good news is that Montana graduated just one player, Konig, a former Big Sky Freshman of the Year and two-time all-tournament team honoree, who’s likely off to a professional career overseas.
Waddington, a skilled 6-foot-3 wing who made her first all-conference team this year as a sophomore, retains two years of eligibility. How many of them she’ll spend in Missoula, in the era of the transfer portal, is unclear.
Jocelyn Land, a sophomore transfer from Butler, also scored in double figures at 10.7 points per game, while Ehrman, just a freshman, shot 37 percent from 3-point range on nearly four attempts per game and certainly showed progress as the year progressed.
If they retain their roster, the Lady Griz would return 137 of 155 starts made this season – likely the highest percentage in the league, and fertile ground for development and improvement. Of course, that’s a big if.
Harris is now the fourth coach to try to step into Selvig’s shoes since the Hall of Famer retired – and so far, the prior attempts by Schweyen, Mike Petrino and Brian Holsinger have mostly served to illustrate the seeming impossibility of the task. Meanwhile, Montana State head coach Tricia Binford has replaced Selvig as the stalwart of the conference. She’s lead MSU for 21 years and is thriving off of much of the same formula Selvig dominated with — continuity, local flavor on the roster, stifling defense — while also hanging banners with regularity.
How do you lead a program that seems incapable or unwilling to separate from its glorious past into the future?
Harris, looking drained and pale at his post-game podium Sunday, clearly understands that second-round tournament losses – even ones with such an obvious built-in excuse – are not the answer.
“Ultimately, we have to put a great basketball product on the floor,” Harris said. “The University of Montana deserves that, our fan base deserves that, the state of Montana deserves that, the kids that play in our program deserve that. And so that will be where our focus lies through the next little bit, because the state, the university, the community of Missoula deserve a winning program.”
