Lady Griz to face first Division I opponent Friday
11/20/2014 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
The Montana women's basketball team will play its first road game of the 2014-15 season and face its first Division I opponent Friday when the Lady Griz play Pacific at Stockton, Calif. Tip time is 8 p.m. (MT).
Coverage: The game can be heard locally on KGVO 1290 AM and 101.5 FM, with Tom Stage and Dick Slater calling the action. ... Fans can enjoy free video coverage through thew.tv or follow the game by live stats. Links to both services can be found on the women's basketball schedule page at GoGriz.com.
What they've done: Montana is 1-0 after its season-opening 55-44 victory over Montana-Western at Dahlberg Arena Monday night. Junior guard McCalle Feller scored 13 points, while redshirt senior guard Kellie Cole Rubel scored 11 points and added seven assists.
Pacific is 1-1 after opening the season last weekend with a pair of home games. On Friday night the Tigers raced past Cal State Stanislaus 98-67 behind a 12-for-27 (.444) effort from 3-point range. On Sunday, Pacific fell to No. 15 California, 84-64. The Tigers got outrebounded by 16.
Junior forward Erin Butler is averaging 15.5 points and 8.0 rebounds, both team highs. She is 8 for 14 (.571) from 3-point range through two games.
Where they finished: Montana went 23-11 last season and finished third in the Big Sky Conference with a 14-6 league record. The Lady Griz advanced to the WNIT, the program's 26th national tournament appearance, and made it to the second round before falling 60-57 to San Diego.
Pacific went 18-13 and finished third in the West Coast Conference at 12-6 in its first year in the league. The Tigers, formerly of the Big West Conference, advanced to the WNIT for the third straight season and fell in the first round at Oregon, 90-63.
Where they were picked: Montana, with two first-place votes, was picked second in the Big Sky Conference preseason coaches' poll behind defending tournament champion and last year's regular-season co-champion North Dakota.
Pacific was picked fourth in the deep WCC, trailing Gonzaga, BYU and San Diego.
Questions that will be answered Friday:
1. Will either team get its center back before Friday's game?
Pacific's 6-2 senior center Kendall Kenyon, who averaged 15.9 points on 55.4 percent shooting and 10.2 rebounds last season, did not play in the Tigers' exhibition game or first two regular-season games. As of last weekend she had not been cleared by team doctors because of mononucleosis.
Kenyon scored her 1,000th career point as a junior and should end her career as the program's all-time leading rebounder, assuming she comes back sooner rather than later. She had 16 double-doubles last season and was on the 10-player preseason All-WCC team.
Montana's 6-3 redshirt senior center Carly Selvig has a slight chance of getting cleared this week. She is on the mend from offseason knee surgery to repair a torn ACL suffered in the WNIT last March.
Selvig, who blocked 88 shots last year to tie the Montana single-season record, was the Big Sky Conference Defensive Player of the Year last season.
2. How will Montana respond to a Division I opponent?
After one-sided exhibition wins over NAIA Great Falls and NCAA Division II Minot State, then opening with NAIA Montana-Western on Monday night, Montana will see its first Division I opponent of the season Friday night.
And the challenges won't get any easier. The team will travel Monday to Mexico for the Cancun Challenge, with games against UNC Charlotte, Princeton and Wake Forest, then return home to host Wyoming in early December. Those teams are a combined 7-1.
But first up is Pacific, a team that took 651 3-point attempts last season and forced 617 turnovers. It reminds 37th-year coach Robin Selvig of a team he faces in the Big Sky Conference.
"They are an interesting team. I compare them to Sacramento State a little bit. It's going to be a big step up from what we've faced to this point. They had a really good team last year and have a lot of players back," he said.
"We're getting into the thick of it right now, not just with them but our next four games after that, so we'll see how we shape up."
3. Can Montana find some inside-outside offensive balance?
One of Montana's strengths this year will be its backcourt, with Cole Rubel running the point and Feller at the shooting guard, but a backcourt can only be a real strength if a team has an inside presence. Selvig has been out, but Montana will need more than it had Monday.
Senior Maggie Rickman and sophomore Alycia Sims started and combined for just eight points. Redshirt sophomore Rachel Staudacher and redshirt freshman Mekayla Isaak combined for six points off the bench.
Montana attempted nearly half (24 of 51) of its shots from 3-point range, an acceptable percentage when a team is feeling it (at 25 percent, the Lady Griz weren't), built to play that way (Montana isn't) or is facing a bigger, stronger team that isn't allowing any other good looks (the Lady Griz weren't).
"We shot 24 threes, and we never did hurt them inside, so obviously we need to get a little more balance," Selvig said. "There are a lot of things we need to get better at, but we'll get a little more balanced as we go along.
"I'm excited to see how we line up now that we're going up against somebody like Pacific."
4. Was Monday's scoring drought an anomaly or something that will bedevil Montana this season?
The Lady Griz went more than 11 minutes spanning the first and second halves without scoring a point Monday night against Montana-Western.
Against the NAIA Bulldogs, who were down by 20 when Montana went silent, it did not lead to a loss. Against a team like Pacific, which is averaging 81 points per game, that won't be the case. In 11 minutes the Tigers are likely to put up 20 or more points.
Fun fact: Montana's was far from being the longest or most damaging scoring drought of the week by a Big Sky team. Idaho State did not score in the opening 13:38 of its loss at Washington State on Sunday. When Apiphany Woods hit a free throw at the 6:21 mark, it cut WSU's lead to 40-1. No kidding.
5. Will rebounding be a season-long bugaboo, or will Montana get it squared away?
The first sign of trouble came when Minot State outrebounded Montana 45-41 in UM's second exhibition game. The Lady Griz had 10 days to work on its glasswork leading up to Monday's season opener ... and Western outrebounded Montana by 10 in the second half and 42-30 for the game.
Without Kenyon in the lineup for its first two games, Pacific is getting outrebounded by 3.5 per game. With her in the lineup, it could spell trouble for the Lady Griz.
History: Montana is 3-1 against Pacific and hasn't played the Tigers since 1999-2000. Pacific's win came in the teams' first meeting, a 79-77 overtime victory at Stockton in 1982-83.
Montana defeated Pacific 92-69 in 1984-85 at UC Santa Cruz's tournament, and the Lady Griz have a pair of home wins over the Tigers, 82-49 in 1988-89 and 55-54 in 1999-2000.
Montana notes: After recording 39 assists against 15 turnovers in its two exhibition wins, Montana had 13 assists and 15 turnovers against Montana-Western Monday night. ... The Lady Griz grabbed just five offensive rebounds against the Bulldogs, which resulted in seven second-chance points. ... Shanae Gilham went 5 for 7 from 3-point range in Montana's two exhibition games. On Monday she went 2 for 9. ... Kellie Cole Rubel had 11 points, seven assists, four rebounds and two steals Monday night, or what should be routine numbers for her this season. ... Haley Vining made her return to the court Monday night. She did not play in Montana's two exhibition games as she continued to recover from offseason knee surgery and hadn't played in a game since getting three minutes against Northern Arizona in last year's regular-season finale. She missed all five of UM's postseason games last March. She had an assist and a steal in seven minutes against the Bulldogs. ... With Rubel likely playing more than 30 minutes per game this season and Vining returning to health, freshman point guard Sierra Anderson is in a holding pattern. If everyone stays healthy and takes all the available minutes, she'll redshirt. If not, she'll be back in uniform out of necessity.
Around the Big Sky Conference: D'Shara Strange, who redshirted last season to recover from a knee injury, did not waste any time showing she is back to full health. She had 14 points, five rebounds and two steals at SMU and 17 points, eight rebounds and four steals at North Texas as Northern Colorado opened its season with a pair of road wins under the Bears' new coaching staff. ... Weber State, Eastern Washington and UNC are all 2-0. ... The Eagles' two wins were as impressive as the Bears'. EWU won 68-62 at Utah Valley and defeated Wichita State 86-58 at Cheney on Tuesday, as Jade Redmon had a 10-point, 11-rebound, 11-assist triple-double, Hayley Hodgins scored 30 points and Lexie Nelson added 29. Hodgins and Nelson were 22 for 33 from the field. ... So put Eastern Washington No. 1A, Northern Colorado 1B and North Dakota 1C in any way-too-early power poll. ... As for preseason favorite North Dakota, it lost 68-59 at Colorado in the preseason WNIT and picked up an impressive 83-76 home victory over Wisconsin-Milwaukee. ... Weber State built its 2-0 record on home wins over Montana-Western and Bristol University, which might be a team of ESPN on-air personalities given WSU's 46-point margin of victory. ... Give Idaho State credit. After getting drilled by 50 points at Washington State on Sunday, the Bengals were within one at the half at Gonzaga on Tuesday before falling 88-63. ... Revealing loss I: Northern Arizona losing at home to Western New Mexico. Revealing loss II: Portland State losing 86-57 at home to South Dakota on Wednesday.
Upcoming: Montana will face UNC Charlotte next Thursday at 4 p.m. (MT) at the Cancun Challenge at Puerto Aventuras, Mexico.
