For the first time, the Big Sky Conference tournament champions are headed to the First Four in Dayton, Ohio.
Montana State finished the regular season with a 14-17 record that included a 9-9 mark in Big Sky men’s basketball play. At the Big Sky Tournament in Boise, Idaho last week, the Bobcats then morphed into a sharp-shooting, run-and-gun outfit that ran through Weber State, outlasted Sacramento State and buried Montana with an avalanche in the title game to earn MSU’s third trip in a row to the NCAA Tournament.
That 17-17 overall mark means Montana State is one of four teams in the 68-team field with less than 20 total wins this season. It also means MSU will head to the First Four in Dayton, Ohio to take on Grambling State on Wednesday night. The winner will earn the right to take on Purdue, a No. 1 seed and the third overall seed in the tournament.
“Seeing our name come up in March Madness, it’s something you dream about as a basketball athlete,” said MSU senior center John Olmsted just moments after the Selection Sunday show aired at Brick Breeden Fieldhouse with a smattering of fans and supporters in attendance to support the first Big Sky Conference team since 1980 to win three straight league tournaments.
“It’s been a whirlwind. No one believed in us this whole season and we wanted to prove everyone wrong. We went into Boise with that attitude and mindset to prove everyone wrong. We took it day by day and handled business like we needed to and got the result we wanted.”
The Bobcats will take on Grambling State in the play-in game. The Tigers were the regular-season champions in the Southwestern Athletic Conference by finishing with a 14-4 record. Grambling reached 20 wins by beating Alabama State, Bethune Cookman and Texas Southern in the SWAC championship game to advance to the Big Dance. Grambling has won nine of its last 10 after a shaky non-conference that included losing nine games in a row.
Grambling’s non-conference losses included a 95-63 loss at Colorado, a 92-37 loss at Iowa State, an 83-65 loss at Washington State and a 96-57 loss at Florida. The Buffs will also be in the first four and will play Boise State for the right to advance to play 7th-seeded Florida. Washington State is also a No. 7 seed while Iowa State is a No. 2 seed.
Grambling State is an HBCU (Historic Black College/University) in Grambling, Louisiana. A total of 5,232 students attend the school, which is most well known for its “World Famed Tiger Marching Band”, the only marching band to play at two consecutive presidential inaugurations. The school is also know for its football team, specifically legendary head coach Eddie Robinson, who led the Tigers to 408 wins and nine Black college national championships between 1946 and 1997.
Kintavious Dozier, a 6-foot-1 combo guard who transferred to Grambling before the season from Gadsden State Community College, is the leading scorer from the Tigers. He is averaging 13.1 points per game on 44 percent shooting and has hit 35 percent of his 71 3-point tries.
Tra’Michael Moton is a four-year starter and five-year player for the Tigers. He had a season-high 26 points in Grambling’s win over Bethune to advance to the SWAC championship game and the 6-foot-1 guard is averaging 11.8 points per game this season.
Antwan Burnett is a 6-foot-5 sophomore forward who is Grambling’s leading rebounder at 6.1 boards per game. He also contributes 10.1 points per contest.
The Tigers are led by seventh-year head coach Dante Jackson, who has the Tigers in the NCAA Tournament field for the first time in their Division I history. Grambling was a Division II and NAIA power house in the late 1950s through the late 1980s, winning 10 conference titles and advancing to the Division II NCAA national tournament twice between 1959 and 1989.
When Jackson first took over at Grambling, the Tigers won the SWAC but were ineligible for the conference or NCAA tournaments because of a low academic progress rating. The Tigers won 17 games each of the next three years before taking a dip to 12 wins in each of the two COVID-19 impacted seasons.
Last year, Grambling won 24 games and won the SWAC regular season championship but lost to Texas Southern in the tournament title game.
Montana State is led by head coach Matt Logie, who took over for Danny Sprinkle after Sprinkle left his alma mater to take the head coaching job at Utah State. Logie has a team he coaches into the NCAA Tournament for the 11th time in the last 12 seasons, although this is his first trip to the Division I Big Dance as a head coach.
If Montana State was to get past Grambling State and then somehow beat No. 1 Purdue, and Sprinkle’s Aggies were to get past TCU in the first round, Montana State and Utah State could square off in the round of 32.
Last season, as a No. 1 seed, Purdue became just the second top seed to lose to a No. 16 seed in NCAA Tournament history. Farleigh Dickinson defeated the Boilermakers 63-58 last year in the first round. The other No. 16 vs. No. 1 upset came when University of Maryland-Baltimore County defeated Virginia 74-54 in 2018.
Tip time for Montana State’s game against Grambling State has not been announced as printing of this story.
