Montana
Idaho State
Cherry's double-double guides Griz to 61-54 win
2/16/2013 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Feb. 16, 2013
Box Score
Will Cherry scored 10 points and grabbed 11 rebounds to help the Montana Grizzlies bounce back from their first conference loss of the 2012-13 season and grab a 61-54 road win over Idaho State.
The Grizzlies (19-5, 15-1 BSC) led by as many as 14 but ISU (5-20, 4-12) rallied to cut the Grizzly lead to 55-52 with just 2:39 to play. Montana outscored the Bengals 6-2 the rest of the way to stave off the comeback bid.
The Griz struggled early and allowed Idaho State to jump out to a nine point, 12-3 lead with 12:25 left in the first half. The Griz then outscored the Bengals 26-10 for the rest of the half and went into the locker room with a 29-22 lead.
Mathias Ward led the Grizzlies with 12 points despite not playing much of the second half with foul trouble. Kareem Jamar and Mike Weisner also scored 10 apiece for the Griz.
Cherry had an excellent all-around game, he added six assists and three steals to his double-double. The three steals gives Cherry 258 career steals and moves him into sole possession of second place in the Big Sky record books. Just 25 shy of Sacramento State's DaShawn Freeman 283 (02-06).
ISU's Morgan Melvin led all scorers with 14 points and Chris Hansen added 12 for the Bengals.
The Griz were 20-of-44 (45.5%) from the field and held ISU to just 17-of-47 (36.2%), the Bengals edged Montana on the boards 26-25.
With the win the Grizzlies hold on to a one game advantage over Weber State (19-5, 14-2) in the Big Sky standings after the Wildcats defeated Montana State 69-61 Thursday night.
Next up the Griz will head to North Carolina to face Davidson next Saturday afternoon on ESPNU for the BracketBusters game. Montana will now have two week before their next Big Sky conference game when they will meet Montana State in Bozeman on March 2nd.
