Baker and De Boer named Lady Griz co-MVPs
5/7/2013 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
May 7, 2013
Before Louisville's Kevin Ware, there was Montana's Shanae Gilham.
Ware became a national sensation in March when he suffered a gruesome leg injury in the Cardinals' regional final victory over Duke. At a moment when he could have been worried about himself -- on a stretcher, his compound fracture under wraps, his future in doubt -- he showed his team-first bent by exhorting his teammates to "Just win the game. I'm okay. Just win the game."
Thing is, he stole Gilham's script.
Fifteen days earlier Gilham was writhing in pain on the south baseline of Dahlberg Arena in the first half of Montana's Big Sky Conference tournament championship game against Northern Colorado. She'd been there before. It was the third ACL tear of her career.
As she was being helped off the court, she caught the eyes of her teammates, most moist with tears for their hapless teammate, and said, "Go get `em!" Three words that sparked the Lady Griz to a 56-43 victory and the NCAA tournament.
David Letterman's people didn't call, as they did Ware, but Montana coach Robin Selvig did when he asked Gilham to come forward to receive the Shannon Green Most Inspirational Player award at the team's recent postseason banquet.
Montana's annual celebration, when the program's five awards are given out and the team's seniors feted, is typically a festive affair, but this year's gathering was done under the pall of former Lady Griz Julie Deming's death, which came just 14 hours earlier in a car accident in Vancouver, Wash.
"We had just heard about it, and I thought Julie would have wanted us to talk about her at the banquet," Selvig said. "All of the Hoop Club members in attendance knew Julie, so we paid a little tribute to her at the start and then went ahead with the awards.
"It's never a bad thing to be reminded that we shouldn't take anything for granted. Every day is a precious one. It's just unfortunate that we need tragedies like Julie's to occasionally be reminded of it."
Montana experienced a return to greatness in 2012-13, so it was fitting that the team's two decorated seniors, Kenzie De Boer and Katie Baker, were voted by their coaches and teammates as co-MVPs.
It was just the fifth time in program history there have been co-winners of the Mary Louise Pope Zimmerman Most Valuable Player award, the first since Brooklynn Lorenzen and Hollie Tyler shared the award in 2003.
The two seniors were also voted most valuable during the season, with Baker earning the Big Sky Conference regular-season MVP and De Boer the Big Sky tournament MVP.
Both were first-team All-Big Sky, and they finished their careers as the fifth- (Baker; 1,427 points) and 12th-ranked (De Boer; 1,270 points) scorers in program history.
And maybe most important? They helped Montana get its swagger back. De Boer and Baker led a team that hadn't won a regular-season Big Sky championship or collected 20 wins in four years -- an eternity for the Lady Griz program -- to a 16-4 league mark and a 24-8 record overall.
"Kenzie and Katie both had great years, so it was very fitting for them to split this award," Selvig said. "Both were great leaders their senior year."
Gilham will forever be hobbled by two bad knees, each of which has had at least one ACL tear. The reason she was an award winner at the banquet is that without the post-surgical scars as proof, nobody who experiences Gilham and her appealing demeanor would know any different.
Gilham missed three early-season games due to a tweaked knee, played just six minutes in Montana's two-point loss to Wyoming because of the flu and sat out two more games late in the season, also because of her knees.
Woe is me? Never with Gilham, whose sizeable dimples that bookend her signature smile never seem to fade away in discouragement.
"You don't see many freshmen winning this award, but through everything Shanae went through this year, she was upbeat and kept her positive attitude," Selvig said.
"She always seemed to be battling something, but she always had a smile on her face through it all, and I think she was really appreciated by her teammates."
Because Montana annually claims a spot at or near the top of the Big Sky Conference defensive statistics, being named the team's Outstanding Defensive Player brings with it a certain gravitas.
Last winter was no different for the Lady Griz. They led the Big Sky in scoring defense (55.4/g) and were just two-thousandths of a percentage point behind league-leader Idaho State in field goal percentage defense (.354).
Montana was at its best during the Big Sky Conference tournament. The Lady Griz held high-scoring Sacramento State to 53 points, 19 below the Hornets' season average, in the semifinals and Northern Colorado to just 43 in the championship game.
Leading the way was senior Alyssa Smith, twice voted by her teammates as the Shannon Green Most Inspirational Player and now named the team's Outstanding Defensive Player as a senior. But Smith was hardly one-dimensional. In fact, she had all the dimensions covered.
In addition to averaging 4.2 points and 4.5 rebounds per game, Smith was a big reason Montana had its best offensive numbers in four years. She finished the season with 71 assists, second on the team to junior Torry Hill's 123, while committing just 28 turnovers. That care with the ball helped the Lady Griz finish ninth nationally in assist-to-turnover ratio.
But it was on the defensive end where Smith did her best work.
"Alyssa had been a very good defender for us," Selvig said. "This year she was a great defender. We were a good defensive team, and she was the leader on the floor for us. She was a great communicator, and she made everyone better."
The Theresa Rhoads Award annually goes to the player who best exemplifies Lady Griz basketball. This year's winner was fifth-year senior Ali Hurley. The Anaconda native was steady on the court, averaging 14.1 minutes while missing not a game her senior year.
Off the court Hurley was taking advantage of what college is designed to do: prepare students for the next phase of their lives. Hurley was a legal intern for the firm of Datsopoulos, MacDonald and Lind last winter, and she was recently accepted into Montana's School of Law, which she'll start in the fall.
"This is an award for somebody who represents our program in a very positive way, and what a great recipient Ali is," Selvig said. "She's just been a great person in our program for five years."
The previous two Grace Geil Most Improved Player awards went to Jordan Sullivan in 2011 and Carly Selvig in 2012. Both were freshmen or redshirt freshmen at the time they won the award, and both went on to have nice seasons the following year, when those improvements were finally coupled with opportunity.
If that history is any indication, look for Hannah Doran, who will be a third-year sophomore next season, to be the next player to make the jump. She was voted this year's most improved player.
"Hannah worked very hard this year. She spent a lot of extra time in the gym, and she's just been getting steadily better, which is what you want people to do," Selvig said.
Doran played sparingly last winter, but it was more because of the team's numbers and experience than anything Doran lacked. She played in 17 of the team's 32 games and shot a healthy 43.8 percent. That included a 5-for-11 performance from 3-point range.
"Hannah did a great job in practice this year, but there just weren't enough minutes to give everybody," Selvig said. "Obviously next year there will be a lot of things open, and she is one of the kids who will be vying for time."
With the loss of Baker, De Boer, Hurley and Smith to graduation, Montana's 2013-14 team will take on a new look with new leadership. Hill and Sullivan will be the team's seniors, and experience returns across the entire junior class of Kellie Cole, Maggie Rickman and Carly Selvig.
Beyond that it's mostly questions (How quickly and how well will Gilham return?) and inexperience.
Montana had four players who did not take the court last winter. Sophomore Haley Vining sat out to recover from her own ACL injury, and true freshmen Molly Klinker, DJ Reinhardt and Rachel Staudacher all redshirted.
Selvig's incoming freshmen are 6-3 forward/center Alycia Sims of Stevensville, Mont., Kayleigh Valley, a 5-11 forward from Spokane, Wash., and 6-2 forward/center Mekayla Isaak of Bend, Ore.
Montana opens its 2013-14 season at home on Sunday, Nov. 10, against MSU Northern.
