Montana completed a road sweep and started Big Sky play 2-0 on Saturday afternoon with a 73-71 win over Idaho. It took a second half comeback for the Griz, who trailed by nine with 15 minutes to play.
Money Williams had eight points during a late 17-8 run that gave Montana (9-6, 2-0) the lead back late, and they held on the final possession of the game with a defensive stop to secure their third straight win in Moscow and a sweep of the EWU-UI road trip for the first time since 2017.
It’s also Montana’s first 2-0 start in conference play since 2020.
“They say take them how you can get them, I don’t like that very much,” head coach Travis DeCuire said with a laugh. “There is some mental toughness in our group, but there are stretches where we are not as tough as we should be. We jumped up early, and I think we thought it would be easy. When they fought back, we lost ourselves for a little while. It took us until halftime to really regroup.”
Williams had the hot hand late and shared the scoring lead with Malik Moore as both players had 18 points on the night. Joe Pridgen had 13 points and 10 rebounds for his fourth double-double of the season and his third in the last five games.
The trio combined for 27 of Montana’s 29 first-half points, but it was the emergence of Kai Johnson and Austin Patterson in the second half that helped the Grizzlies to the win. Johnson had 10 points, all coming in the second half, and Patterson also scored seven of his nine points in the final 20 minutes.
Montana outshot Idaho 53.8-to-42.2 percent from the floor, making more than half of their shots for the second straight game and fifth time in the last six games.
Montana’s defense carried them to a big lead early, as Idaho opened the game shooting 1-of-13 from the floor and the Griz also forced a pair of turnovers that they scored off of to open the game up 12-3.
The Griz continued to control early with back-to-back threes from Moore helping extend the lead out to 18-7. A Joe Pridgen layup made it 20-7 in favor of the Grizzlies on the road.
Idaho answered with an 8-0 run to keep things close in the first half before Moore’s 10th point of the first half ended a three-minute drought.
The trio of Williams, Moore, and Pridgen did the heavy lifting for Montana in the first half. Williams drove for a physical finish in the lane to put Montana up 27-21, and at the time that trio had 25 of Montana’s 27 points.
Idaho took its first lead of the half at 28-27 on an alley-oop to Julius Mims. Moore gave Montana the lead back briefly, but the Vandals went back up and took a 32-29 lead into the break.
Moore had a dozen points on 5-of-9 shooting to go with four rebounds and two assists. Pridgen had eight points and five rebounds, while Williams had seven points on 50 percent shooting.
The Vandals built up the lead early in the second half behind hot shooting from the arc, going ahead by nine at 48-39. The trio kept Montana in it in the first half, but Johnson got hot in the second half to help pull Montana back in.
Johnson had five points during an 8-0 Montana run that cut the lead back down to just one at 50-49. Montana pulled level in the second half for the first time at 55-all following a free throw from Sawyer.
“Kai got in a groove. When he’s a groove, it makes us very difficult to stop because he can create in space and now you have three or four guys on the floor at a time that can make a play,” DeCuire said.
DeCuire rode with a second half lineup that featured a lot of Johnson and Patterson off the bench, and also Moore running the point guard position. He finished with a team-high four assists.
“Malik had long stretches where he was running the point, really he ran the point for most of the second half, and he hadn’t done that in four or five games,” DeCuire said. “All of them have the ability to play in different spots one through four for the most part. It allows us to play to the hot hand.”
Williams took control of the game late, and had the play of the night on the defensive end. The Griz led 68-66, and Williams came from behind for a steal and turned it into a three-point play on the other end to make it 71-66 Montana.
He had the final six points of the game for Montana, who needed a defensive stop on the final possession for the win. Kolton Mitchell had a three-pointer in the final seconds, and Kristian Gonzalez was able to get an offensive rebound and put up a second-chance effort, but it wouldn’t fall and the Griz held on for the 73-71 win.
It’s an impressive sweep of a road trip that has proved difficult for Montana in recent years. The Grizzlies were the favorites in the preseason coaches poll. The media’s preseason favorite, Montana State, went 0-2 on the same trip.
The strength for Montana this year, and something it hasn’t had for the past few seasons, is the ability for multiple players to score the ball. Johnson’s hot hand saved Montana when they trailed in the second half tonight. Williams finished the game, and Moore had stretches of impressive play. Just when the defense starts to focus in on one of them, another player has the ability to take over.
“We’ve got a plethora of shooting, we’ve got a plethora of ball-handling, so when you’ve got both of those things you are hard to guard,” DeCuire said. “I think it’s why they went zone so much because it’s hard to keep these guys out of the paint. But when we were willing to move the ball against the zone, we got even better shots, and that’s how we made our run.”
Montana now returns home for the first time in a month to take on Northern Arizona on Thursday and Northern Colorado on Saturday. The Lumberjacks are 1-1, and Northern Colorado is the only other Big Sky team at 2-0 after the first weekend of play.
The Lumberjacks feature one of the nation’s leading scorers in Trent McLaughlin. The Bears have also been one of the best teams in the league in recent years, and have the highest NET Ranking of any Big Sky team this year.
“It’s huge, especially to do it here,” DeCuire said of the sweep. “I think that this is a sweep that will be hard for most teams to come by. Now we’re going home and we need some support because these are two tough teams that I think look like they will finish in the top four in conference. If we’re able to hold the fort down, we will be sitting in a really good spot going into week three.”
