BOZEMAN, Montana — Tricia Binford is glad her team endured some growing pains during a trying non-conference schedule that came to a close on Monday afternoon.
Binford’s Montana State women’s basketball team went from one of the oldest in all of Division I — a roster led by five seniors including Big Sky Conference MVP Fallyn Freije that won 19 league game in 20 outings last season — to one of the youngest in the country during this truncated and now complete calendar year.
Binford’s current starting lineup features two sophomores (Darian White, Kola Bad Bear) and two freshmen (KJ Limardo, Taylor Janssen) while the rotation also features four other freshmen and two other sophomores. Tori Martell is the only senior on the squad.
Despite the youth, Montana State embarked on a challenging non-conference slate that included an opener against North Dakota, a team that won the Big Sky twice in seven years of membership before leaving after the 2018 season. MSU also played at BYU (a 72-58 loss), a team picked to finish second in the West Coast Conference, and at Utah (a 73-63 loss in which MSU led in the fourth quarter), a team picked to finish in the middle of the Pac 12.
Montana State earned a hard-fought 80-67 win at Portland on Sunday behind a virtuoso performance from sophomore point guard Darian White. She finished one assist shy of the first triple-double by a Bobcat in 16 years against a team that was ranked No. 21 in last week’s Mid-Major Top 25 poll.
Monday, Montana State wrapped up its non-conference against perhaps the most challenging program the Bobcats have faced this calendar year. MSU went blow for blow with South Dakota State for most of the first half but a tough two-minute stretch early in the third quarter helped the Jackrabbits take a lead they would not relinquish on the way to an 82-67 loss.
“There’s certain mistakes on the (drawing) board and on film that I wish we had a full preseason schedule with such a young team and we don’t,” Binford said. “I think they are trying to communicate. I think we just need reps.
“What got us today was more mistakes of our own rather than South Dakota State as good as South Dakota State is. Their post (Myah Selland) beat us but I also think we beat ourselves a lot of ways.”
Selland led a physical effort by the Jacks by bullying her way to 27 points on 8-of-14 shooting from the field in addition to a perfect 9-of-9 effort at the free throw line. She also hauled in a game-high 12 rebounds as SDSU whipped Montana State on the glass, earning a 42-33 advantage.
“That kid (Selland) was very, very talented,” Binford said. “She’s the real deal. We’ve consistently, that’s two games in a row, somebody in the post play has put up 31 (Portland’s Alex Fowler) and 27 points, so to not find a way to take that off the board, we are going to have to figure that out.”
The young Bobcats are the defending Big Sky champions. MSU has earned three Big Sky regular-season titles in the last five years and advanced to the NCAA Tournament in 2017.
A team led by the returning first-team All-Summit League duo of Selland and Paiton Burckhard, a pair of juniors who landed on the Summit’s preseason all-league team as well, the Jackrabbits have established a strong tradition as one of the top mid-major programs in the country under Aaron Johnston, who is in his 21st season at the helm.
SDSU has advanced to nine of the last 11 NCAA Tournaments, earning first-round wins in 2016 (74-71 as a No. 12 seed over No. 5 Miami) and a pair of victories during the last NCAA Tournament in 2019. Two years ago, the sixth-seeded Jackrabbits dispatched of Quinnipiac in the first round and upset Syracuse 75-64 in the second round to advance to the Sweet 16 for the first time ins school history.
SDSU fell to Sabrina Ionescu and the Oregon Ducks, just the latest accomplishment of Ionescu, one of the greatest women’s collegians to ever compete.
In other words, SDSU was the perfect final test for MSU before taking a break leading up to league openers at Southern Utah on December 31 and January 2.
“We had a brutal schedule so my hope is it’s going to feel a lot easier as we head into conference,” Binford said. “I really hope that unfolds….I think we are going to be a little bit behind that just because we are younger and we haven’t had as many games but at the same time.
“The conference is very tough. There are two or three teams that have a lot of experience returning. But if we can get mistakes off film and stop beating ourselves, I think we are going to be as good as anyone in this conference if not the best. I think we have the most depth and I think we have tremendous talent. I’m just not sure we know how to play with each other yet.”
In the second quarter Monday, the Bobcats took a 25-16 deficit and cut into it to forge a 29-29 tie with one minute, 48 seconds left until halftime. SDSU entered the break down 35-31 after Martell’s layup; MSU’s lone senior finished with a team-high 16 points and hit four 3-pointers in eight attempts.
Midway through the third quarter, SDSU pushed the lead to 12 points only to see MSU shave the gap to 48-43. Selland’s second-chance bucket with 2:52 left in the third gave SDSU an 11-point lead and the gap would stay in double digits until the 85 seconds left in the game.
“We have absolutes that we want to focus on and toward the end of the second quarter, we lost focus on what we needed to do, things we normally wouldn’t let a team do,” said White, who finished with 14 points, five rebounds and five assists. “That got the best of us and it was mostly on the defensive end.”
Binford identified rebounding and transition as key areas she wanted to see her team improve. South Dakota State scored 34 points in the paint, grabbed 12 offensive rebounds and corralled White better than most teams have so far this season and this calendar year.
“Was our transition defense better? Maybe. But one of our worst defensive clip was when we had it tied at 29 and we go into the locker room and in a minute, 40 seconds, against a team that is in my opinion, is a Top 25 team, you just don’t have the luxury of those mistakes,” Binford said. “That’s the difference. We are playing with a lot of mistakes.”
Montana State’s attention now turns to defending its most recent title. The Bobcats went 19-1 against league competition last season, winning 17 straight leading up to a tournament championship game that never happened. MSU opens the 2021 league slate the last night of 2020 at Southern Utah. Under the new BSC schedule, the ‘Cats and the Thunderbirds will play again on January 2. Until then, Binford’s players will get a few days to regroup over holiday break.
“The benefit of having them get home is they need a mental and physical break,” Binford said. “I think we’ve hit a wall and part of that is our schedule.
“We had multiple quarantines when practice started and then we are trying to start a season and get five games in in a few weeks when we basically had one week of practice. We haven’t had time to focus on ourselves and then we threw a schedule up that was really hard on them physically from a body standpoint just getting them into condition.
“I loved the schedule we have been able to get and to get all five games in was great. But they need this break mentally and physically.”
