EDITOR’S NOTE: Hours after this story was published, three more Big Sky Conference men’s basketball games came down to the wire – Idaho beat Sac State in overtime, Weber State outlasted Idaho State in double overtime and Montana beat Northern Arizona by one point in regulation.
Travis DeCuire took a deep breath. Then he exhaled it. And before giving his answer to the first question of his post-game interview following a road win on the last Saturday in January, he chuckled for a few seconds.
Then he exclaimed, “Huge. You make your own luck. I honestly believe that. And we hadn’t really been playing together, we hadn’t been trusting one another. Tonight, we did. You have to in this league, this year.”
The sigh of relief was indicative and symbolic of the grind the Big Sky Conference season has been so far, and not just for DeCuire’s Montana Grizzlies. In fact, DeCuire’s exhale into relieved laughter came after a 73-67 win over Portland State in the City of Roses.
A six-point victory in Big Sky men’s hoops this year is a decisive one. Through 11 league games (some teams have played just 10) for the 10 conference men’s basketball teams, there have been 11 games decided by a single possession, including four that went to overtime and four that were decided on shots made in the final four seconds.
“I truly think everyone in this league can win every single night and I think this year, any team from this league could represent the Big Sky in the NCAA Tournament in March,” Northern Arizona fourth-year head coach Shane Burcar said.
On the first Thursday night in February, three Big Sky Conference teams scored 69 points. Each won by a single possession as Montana broke a four-game Thursday losing streak with a 69-67 win over Northern Colorado, Montana State eked out a 68-67 win over Northern Arizona and Portland State outlasted Idaho 69-66.
That’s the story of the season throughout the Big Sky so far in 2023. NAU, Northern Colorado and Idaho enter the month each with just two league wins. None is losing games by more than 6.7 points per outing.
Eastern Washington is riding a 13-game winning streak and the 11 straight Big Sky wins are a school record. But even the Eagles have had to gut out four single-possession wins, plus a 75-71 win over Weber State on January 28.
“Look at Eastern Washington right now, who is unbeaten in league. They have had A TON of close games, but they have found ways to win at the end,” said Northern Colorado head coach Steve Smiley, who led his team to the Big Sky Tournament championship game last year.
“You have to give them credit for that. You can talk about youth or experience. You can give a million different hypotheses why there’s been so many close games. But when it really gets down to the course of the game and the season, the most solid teams are winning more than they are losing.”
Eastern Washington currently sits in first place with an unbeaten record. The Eagles have won five times over the last month-plus in the final minute of the game. Steele Venters’ shot-making ability in the clutch has come up huge for the Eagles, who are in pursuit of their second Big Sky title in the last three year, and first under second-year head coach David Riley.
Montana State sits in second place with a 9-2 mark. The Bobcats have found ways to win in the final minute two times over the last month, once against the rival Griz in Missoula to break an 11-game losing streak at Dahlberg Arena with a 67-64 win and the other on Thursday night against the hard-luck Lumberjacks.
“The talent, the coaching, there’s not that much of a gap between teams,” DeCuire, Montana’s ninth-year head coach, said. “I think the biggest thing is that the coaching staffs are doing a good job of preparing for one another and taking things away.”
Of MSU’s two losses, one came at the hands of EWU when Venters hit a 3-pointer with 19 seconds left to give EWU a 68-65 lead on the way to a 70-67 win in Bozeman on December 31.
“Any given night, you cannot only get beat but you can get blown out,” Montana State fourth-year head coach Danny Sprinkle said. “I don’t care who you are, one through 10. There’s a ton of parity so you have to be mature and execute every night if you want to have a chance to win.”
Venters continued his all-league campaign (15.6 points per game in league play) when he drilled a 3-pointer with two seconds left to lift the Eagles to a 78-75 win over Sacramento State on January 7. Two nights earlier, Idaho’s Dominique Ford hit a buzzer-beater to force overtime only to watch Zach Chappell and Sac State close out an 85-83 overtime victory.
And so it’s gone, with every league weekend so far featuring at least one men’s game that has gone down to the final possession. In Flagstaff that same night (January 5), Jalen Cone drilled a 3-pointer with 26 seconds let in overtime to lift NAU to a 75-74 victory over Montana, snapping a 12-game conference losing streak in the process.
That was about the only good fortune Northern Arizona has found in tight games. Hunter Woods hit a true walk-off buzzer-beater to lift Portland State to a 75-74 on January 12. NAU led 74-69 with 17 seconds left but gave up consecutive 3-pointers, including the dagger.
Two nights later, Gianni Hunt hit two free throws with five seconds left to give Sac State a 59-56 decision over the ‘Jacks. And on January 21, Eastern Washington’s Angelo Allegri hit five free throws while EWU hit seven from the charity stripe in the final 1:45 to emerge from Flagstaff with a 79-76 win.
The agony more than the ecstasy has defined Northern Arizona’s season to this point. NAU led for 37 minutes, 32 seconds on Thursday night in Bozeman. But Montana State got a Great Osobor bully bucket with 3.8 seconds left and Jalen Cone’s lay-up attempt rolled off the rim, although the potential game-winner also came half a second after the buzzer. The Lumberjacks took the defending Big Sky champion Bobcats down to the wire but instead fell to 2-8 in league play.
“They have four losses in the last seconds of games, so their record could easily be flipped,” Sprinkle said. “Idaho, Idaho State…there’s so many close games in this league, you have to do what Eastern Washington has done. In their 10 wins, probably in five of them, they’ve hit 3s or big shots in the last 30 seconds to earn the win. We have to continue to make those plays in the last four minutes of games to keep winning ourselves.”
Burcar’s team has come out on the wrong side more often than not in a conference struggling to find its identity where almost every game, the margin between victory and defeat is razor-thin.
“We have had some heart-breaking losses,” Burcar said. “We lost on a buzzer-beater. We’ve had some stuff we couldn’t control in the end.
“To get those games, to win those games, I watched after every close game we’ve lost, studied it. I think we are close to being really good but our record would not indicate that. It’s simple: it comes down to executing at the end.
“But some of the ways we’ve lost, this is my 25th year of coaching, and I’ve never experienced what we did against Portland State, not being able to finish the game. I’ve lost on buzzer beaters, but to lead by five points with 17 seconds left and lose, everything that can go wrong has to go the other way.”
In David Patrick’s first season at the helm, Sacramento State got off to a nice start, winning five of its first eight conference games, including ripping Montana, for decades the gold standard of the league, 67-48 on January 26. The Hornets lost a back and forth battle 72-65 to Montana State on January 28, marking their first home loss of the season. And EWU’s 82-63 win on February second over the Hornets leaves them at 5-5 in league play.
The Hornets have been on both ends of the roller coaster more than anyone in the conference. Chappell hit two buzzer-beaters in three days to help Sac beat Denver in overtime and topple defending Big West champion Long Beach State 76-74 the following Saturday back in December.
That’s continued in league play as Sac has the overtime win over Idaho and the three-point victory over NAU. Sac also lost when Venters drilled a triple with two seconds left in a 78-75 EWU win. And Sacramento State has also been the victim of a buzzer-beater, one in the form of the lay-up converted by Dillon Jones with less than two seconds to play to give Weber State a crucial 50-48 win.
Weber State’s last-second wins over Montana and Sac State has the Wildcats alone in third place at 6-3, while Sac sits at 5-5 and Montana checks in at 5-6.
“I think there’s two teams, Montana State and Eastern Washington, who are head and shoulders above all the other teams and everybody else is kind of even,” Patrick said. “I think we are losing close games, then I watch NAU at the buzzer multiple times, Montana State loses at Idaho (74-70). These games are nail-biters and that speaks volumes to the league and volumes to the coaching that you have guys who can compete night in and night out.”
In head coach Jase Coburn’s second season, Portland State felt the thrill of victory and the heartbreak of narrow defeat in a single weekend. Two nights after Woods’ buzzer-beater downed NAU, Dalton Knecht hit a pair of free throws with 10 seconds left to propel Northern Colorado to 69-67 win over PSU.
And on the first Thursday of February, PSU led 67-60 with 2:49 left but needed a pair of Cameron Parker free throws to seal a 69-66 win over Idaho to move to 4-6 in league play, two games ahead of the two-win trio of the Vandals, UNC and NAU.
“Right now, I think you have to play really well against everybody, whether it’s home or on the road, to win,” Coburn said. “I don’t think teams can play bad or play just ok and get a win in our league right now with the way everything is going.”
When playing the woulda, coulda, shoulda game, Montana might have as stable of ground to stand on as anybody. The Grizzles lost on Cone’s late triple in OT. A week later, The Griz led Weber State 57-56 with less than two seconds to play, only to see the most improbable of endings play out. Lonnell Martin Jr. slipped while trying to inbound the ball, leading to a Dyson Koehler steal that turned into a Steven Verplancken 3-pointer with 0.9 seconds left to help WSU to a 59-57 win in Missoula.
Montana also led 64-62 with 39 seconds left against Montana State in Missoula only to see RaeQuan battle draw a controversial foul while Martin contested his 3-point jump shot attempt. Battle drilled all three free throws and Darius Brown II added two more to lift the ‘Cats to a 3-point win.
So when DeCuire’s team pulled out a two-point victory on Thursday February 2, he didn’t chuckle as much as he just breathed easy, showing optimism that the bad luck might be running out and his team might be building the trust he thinks they need in order to persevere in a league with a slim margin for victory.
“We needed a Thursday win but we also needed a close game that goes down the stretch where everything doesn’t necessarily go your way but find a way to pull it out,” DeCuire said following the win over UNC. “I’ll take both of those in one night. I think we are heading in the right direction in that regard.
“There’s some games we should have won. Unlucky. Guys running into baskets, a couple of calls not going your way…you just have to create your own luck.”
